


patient zero

by buzzcut__season



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Coming Out, Domestic Fluff, Eventual Smut, Implied/Referenced Medical Abuse, Intimacy, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oikawa Tooru's Knee Injury, Pretty Setter Squad, Slow Burn, Touch-Starved, background daisuga and bokuaka, but its for ~character development~, iwa-chan's toxic masculinity, misuse of prescription drugs, not a sickfic even though it sounds like it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:08:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 74,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26945701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buzzcut__season/pseuds/buzzcut__season
Summary: It isn’t until high school that the specialists give Tooru an official diagnosis. The biomagnetic field around his heart is too strong, far stronger than should be humanly possible, and that’s  why it feels like an electric shock when you touch him. If you get within ten feet of Tooru, you can feel all his emotions, stark and obvious as if his ribcage is wide open, exposing his heart.“You should have known, Iwa-chan,” Tooru says, lying on his back in the middle of Hajime’s bed, tossing a pillow in the air and catching it. “Everyone can see how magnetic I am. It’s all in my charm. You wouldn’t know about that.”“This is a medical problem, assface,” says Hajime. “It means something’s wrong with you.”or: even though hajime can sense tooru's emotions just by standing next to him, it still takes them a few years to figure things out.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 130
Kudos: 209





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> It's not every day I lose all grip on sanity and write a 85k fic, but here we are!
> 
> This started on a whim when I stumbled across a study about how we can sense other people's moods through the biomagnetic fields around their hearts, and I wanted to project an extreme version of this onto Oikawa. I love to write him suffering, so this fic is a lot of pain, but I think it's balanced with the silly stuff and iwaoi being disgustingly domestic. A good portion of this is also an examination of Iwaizumi as a character and how he handles anger/responsibility/being Oikawa's caretaker lol. 
> 
> This fic is complete (after a long two months), so I'll be posting the chapters every week as I edit them :) Thank you for joining me on this unnecessarily long journey!

**prologue**

.

Tooru first gets the specialists when they’re in middle school. 

Hajime remembers the day they come. The team is lingering around the court, sitting on the floor and the bleachers, but no one is playing yet. No one is sure they’re allowed to play yet. Hajime is watching the locker room door, waiting for Kageyama to come out. Next to him, Tooru is typing out paragraphs on his brand-new cell phone, then deleting the paragraphs, then typing new ones. 

“Stop doing that,” Hajime says, without taking his eyes off the door. There’s no way Kageyama is going to miss practice, even if he ended up in the nurse’s office yesterday. Kageyama never misses practice. 

Tooru huffs, dropping his phone in his lap. “Doing what?”

“I don’t know,” says Hajime. “Stop second-guessing yourself.” Tooru does this sometimes. Writes out things to say ahead of time, drafting and re-drafting his team pep talks, his insults, his excuses. Maybe this time he’s drafting out an apology, but Hajime doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want to hear it. 

“I’m not hurting you,” says Tooru.

“I didn’t say you were,” says Hajime, but Tooru’s words set him on edge, and he glances quickly around the gym. Of course Tooru isn’t hurting him. Tooru has never hurt him. Well, never on purpose. 

“Just because you never think before you speak,” Tooru starts, but Hajime’s not listening to him anymore, because all along the bleachers, their teammates have begun to stand up. The doors on the other side of the gym have opened, and Coach is holding the door for two strangers, a man and a woman. 

The specialists are wearing blue medical gloves. Their clothes are ordinary, their faces plain, but they’re wearing blue gloves and surgical masks and suddenly Hajime feels afraid. 

He glances at Tooru. Tooru is staring ahead, at the man and the woman, his eyebrows drawing together. “Who’re they?” Tooru whispers to Hajime, out of the corner of his mouth, and then he grabs Hajime’s upper arm, hard. “Do you think they’re from the hospital? Tobio-chan isn’t hurt  _ that _ badly. I know he’s not. I saw him in the halls earlier.” 

Hajime doesn’t know how to respond. He doesn’t want to respond at all. All day, Tooru has been insisting that Kageyama isn’t hurt  _ that  _ badly, and Hajime can feel the guilt and fear in his words growing stronger each time. They did see Kageyama in the halls earlier, but Kageyama was pale and skittish and the way he hurried across the hallway to give Tooru a wide berth—Hajime knows it’s bad. 

Hajime knows Tooru didn’t mean to do it. But it’s still bad, and Hajime squeezes his hands into fists on the bench. 

The specialists are speaking with Coach now. The man moves his hands a lot but the woman just stands there, her surgical mask stark blue against her limp dark hair, and when she catches Hajime’s eye, she keeps staring at him. Hajime feels the fear crawling up his arms, bleeding out of Tooru’s body. The woman’s eyes slide to Tooru, and in that moment, Hajime feels a cold suspicion touch his stomach. 

The specialists aren’t here to see Kageyama, he realizes. They’re here to see Tooru. 

“What happened yesterday?” is the first question the woman asks when Coach leads the specialists over. Tooru looks frightened for a minute, his shoulders going rigid, but very quickly it becomes a scowl. Defensive, panicky, trying not to show it. It’s not a good look on Tooru. 

“Nothing happened,” he says, his voice ringing through the gym. Tooru has been repeating this all day. “I didn’t even touch him!” 

“Kageyama Tobio collapsed in this gym yesterday,” the woman says, harsh, clinical. “What did you do to him?” 

“I didn’t do anything,” Tooru repeats, and then he elbows Hajime, sending a punch of emotion through Hajime’s body. Tooru’s desperation jostles the ions in Hajime’s bloodstream, but Hajime just clenches his jaw against the sensation. It’s not painful, it’s just strange. 

It’s not painful, but the man’s eyes zero in on Hajime anyway, on the places he and Tooru are pressed together. 

“Don’t touch him,” the man says sharply, and this is the first rule. 

_ Don’t touch him.  _

“He didn’t hit Kageyama,” Hajime says, scooting away from Tooru hastily, watching the beginnings of an angry flush climbing Tooru’s neck. Every emotion radiates off Tooru’s body, burning through the thin skin on his face, burning through the air. Tooru’s emotions have always been this way, but Hajime has never felt afraid before. 

“Then what happened?” the woman demands again. 

“Tobio-chan just collapsed,” Tooru says. “I wasn’t even standing next to him. I didn’t touch him. There’s no way he was hurt  _ that  _ badly, because—”

“Stop,” says the woman, her voice louder, cutting through Tooru’s words. “What happened  _ before _ he collapsed?” 

Tooru clamps his mouth shut, the anger and fear burning off him. Hajime isn’t going to be the one to tell them what happened. Tooru is right, he didn’t touch Kageyama, he was standing several feet away. But Tooru yelled, exploded, his anger rocketing through the room like a bomb, throwing one of the volleyballs so hard it smacked into the wall behind Kageyama with a sound like a cannon. When Tooru yelled, his rage ripped painfully through everyone’s bodies. They all felt it, even though Kageyama was the only one to collapse. 

Hajime isn’t going to tell them this. He keeps his mouth shut, but it doesn’t matter. 

The specialists lead Tooru away. 

.

**part one**

**unseen**

.

It isn’t until high school that they give Tooru an official diagnosis. The biomagnetic field around his heart is too strong, far stronger than should be humanly possible, and that’s why his moods fill the entire room the moment he walks in. That’s why it feels like an electric shock when you touch him. If you get within ten feet of Tooru, you can feel all his emotions, stark and obvious as if his ribcage is wide open, exposing his heart. 

“You should have known, Iwa-chan,” Tooru says, lying on his back in the middle of Hajime’s bed, tossing a pillow up and catching it, over and over again. “Everyone can see how magnetic I am. It’s all in my charm. You wouldn’t know about that.” 

“This is a medical problem, assface,” says Hajime, spinning around in his desk chair. “It means something’s wrong with you.” 

Tooru heaves a big, over-the-top sigh, hugging the pillow to his chest. “Ah, I guess I have to have at least  _ one  _ flaw. But isn’t it nice that it’s something so romantic? The girls will love this.” 

Hajime doesn’t see anything romantic about it, personally, but he doesn’t say anything because he knows Tooru is full of shit. He’s just puffing his feathers, trying to ward off Hajime’s concern. Hajime can feel Tooru’s desperation all the way across the room, where Hajime’s sitting at his desk. It reverberates through the air with Tooru’s pulse. That’s the biomagnetism, Hajime assumes—the specialists say the frequency changes with his mood, and in Hajime’s opinion, there’s nothing less romantic than having all of Tooru’s obnoxious moods thrust in his face every five seconds. Tooru’s already an extremely moody person.

“Doesn’t it make you—I dunno.” Hajime doesn’t want to make the desperation any worse, but he and Tooru have been skirting around the issue ever since the Kageyama incident last year. Now the specialists are downstairs with Tooru’s mother, and the issue is too big to be ignored anymore. 

“Use your words, Iwa-chan!” Tooru says, beginning to toss the pillow again. “I can’t understand you when you just grunt.” 

Hajime frowns. Tooru refuses to be serious about this, at least outwardly, but it  _ is  _ serious. The enormity of it is palpable. Tooru has been in and out of doctor’s offices for the past year and a half, but when the specialists sat them down today to explain the diagnosis, they seemed grim rather than relieved. 

There’s no cure for what’s wrong with Tooru. 

“Doesn’t it make you embarrassed? I don’t know.” Hajime is embarrassed to even bring this up—he can feel his neck warm when Tooru stops tossing the pillow. “Everyone can feel it when you’re angry.” 

“Then they’ll know not to make me angry,” Tooru says. There’s a heavy, awkward pause, before Tooru starts rambling quickly. “After what happened, Tobio-chan never bothered us again. Wasn’t that nice? For the rest of my life, annoying people will know exactly when to stay away. And now Tobio-chan won’t try to come to Seijou, which’s a relief, I wouldn’t be able to stand having to see his ugly face at practice every day. I already have to see you, that’s bad enough—”

“You don’t have to pretend like it’s okay,” Hajime interrupts. “That’s what I’m saying. I can  _ feel _ that it’s not okay.” 

There’s another pause, and then Tooru sits up suddenly, his perfect hair mussed from lying on Hajime’s pillows. “Don’t do that, Iwa-chan,” he says. His voice is weird, but he’s trying so hard to pretend it isn’t, except he can’t pretend, because Hajime can feel the insecurity building in the air. “It’s rude to try to sense other people’s feelings. It’s an invasion of privacy.” 

“I’m not  _ trying  _ to,” Hajime says, raising his voice slightly. “I can’t help it. It’s all over the room.” 

Tooru stares at him. Hajime feels his skin prickle. Now there’s a tinge of fear to Tooru’s biomagnetic field, the same fear he felt when Tooru answered the door earlier and it was the specialists, in their blue surgical gloves. 

“Come here,” Tooru says, and in an instant his long legs are swinging over the side of the bed and he’s standing in the middle of Hajime’s bedroom, in a too-small sweater from last winter, a pair of Hajime’s sweatpants. Hajime stares at him, distracted by the piece of Tooru’s hair that falls into his eyes, before shaking himself. 

“What?”

“Come here,” Tooru repeats, standing as tall as he can, raking his hair back and looking oddly lonely even surrounded by Hajime’s laundry. Lonely but determined. Hajime’s not sure if it’s the biomagnetism or just the firm press of Tooru’s mouth, but Hajime feels suddenly, uncomfortably warm. 

“What for?” he asks, but he’s already standing up from the desk, because he knows Tooru won’t let it go. When he steps toward Tooru, two steps across the small bedroom, he can feel the build-up of electricity in the air, and the way Tooru’s trying to hold his panic at bay. When he takes two more steps, the fear and nervousness creeps under Hajime’s skin until he begins to feel nervous, himself. 

It feels like all his atoms are standing at attention. 

“Do you feel it?” Tooru demands.

Hajime’s arms prickle, and he wraps them around himself as Tooru takes another baby step forward, until they’re nearly toe-to-toe. Hajime hasn’t been this close to him since the Kageyama incident. The specialists told Tooru not to touch anyone until they figured out if he was dangerous. 

_ Dangerous.  _ Hajime understands why. 

He can feel the biomagnetic field radiating between them. Every hair on Hajime’s arms stands up, and he can’t look away from Tooru’s dark eyes, his eyebrows drawn together in his intensity, the stray eyelash that has dropped to his cheek. 

Tooru has always been a bit painful to stand near, even when they were kids. Hajime remembers the first time Tooru clung to him, crying, after falling out of a tree, and Hajime nearly began crying too. Later on he had chalked the feeling up to empathy, or a sort of telepathic ability that they developed after too many nights sleeping back-to-back, until Hajime could feel Tooru’s emotions and Tooru could feel Hajime’s. 

But Tooru  _ can’t _ feel Hajime’s. Not like this. 

Hajime feels his breath stick in his throat as Tooru moves even closer, their toes touching, a tingle going up Hajime’s entire body. He thinks dimly that he hasn’t seen Tooru be quiet for this long in months, but the thought vanishes into pure shock when Tooru touches his arms. 

The biomagnetism flows directly from Tooru’s body into Hajime’s like an electrical circuit, lighting up all Hajime’s atoms, and his whole body burns with the sensation. He can barely register where Tooru is touching him, because it feels like Tooru is touching him  _ everywhere,  _ inside and out, like Hajime has  _ become  _ Tooru. It’s not painful per se but it’s overwhelming, it’s touch and taste and Hajime’s eyes blur a bit, his mouth working over the sheer shock of it all. Because it’s not just the electricity—Hajime can feel Tooru’s emotions, all of them, so powerful it’s like he’s having a breakdown in the club room after a hard loss, rising anxiety and fear and insecurity over—over—over everyone  _ knowing,  _ insecurity so stark and whole and all-consuming there’s no room for embarrassment. 

Tooru is terrified.  _ Hajime  _ is terrified. 

“Stop,” Hajime gasps, pulling back, and he sees Tooru blanch, but even more he  _ feels  _ it, the spike in frequency, and Hajime has to grab the bedpost to stop himself from collapsing like Kageyama. 

Tooru stumbles backward, into the bedside table, and Hajime heaves air, clinging to the bed. He doesn’t understand what just happened, only that Tooru’s emotions suddenly became too much. Tooru hides his face in his hair, turning away, but Hajime can still feel the fear pulsing through the room. He can see the whiteness of Tooru’s knuckles on the table. 

“Sorry,” Hajime gasps when he can breathe again, but Tooru shakes his head furiously. Hajime gets a glimpse of tears on his face before he turns away, grabbing his things off the bed. Or he’s pretty sure he saw it. There’s no way he could just— _ feel  _ Tooru crying, especially from three feet away. 

“I have to go,” Tooru grits out, but he doesn’t brush Hajime’s arm when he hurries past him. He doesn’t touch him at all. It takes a few moments to hear the front door slam and a few more moments for the biomagnetism to drain out of the room, and Hajime leans against the bed, ears ringing, trying to catch his breath, trying not to ache from the loss of all the emotion. 

* * *

For three days, Tooru refuses to come back over to Hajime’s. He’s not at school, because the specialists are running diagnostics on him, so Hajime goes silently between classes and researches biomagnetism instead of paying attention. The research is shoddy and scarce. Scientists hypothesize that the biomagnetic fields around human hearts can allow them to sense each other’s moods, but only on a very small scale, nothing like the overwhelming obviousness of Tooru’s emotions. 

On the third day, Hajime finally messages him, even though he has an unspoken rule that he never messages Tooru first. Tooru already texts him too much, any and every thought he has during the day. For example they’ll be sitting right next to each other at lunch, and Matsukawa will be telling a story, and Tooru just won’t be able to wait for a break in the conversation, so he’ll text Hajime,  **Did you see that hideous pimple on Mr. Yamamoto’s nose today? If you’re not careful, Iwa-chan, you’ll end up looking just like him** **♥ ♥ ♥**

But today Hajime messages him first, just once. 

**The girls are asking about you, Shittykawa.**

Tooru doesn’t respond, not that Hajime expects him to. He just sends the text because he knows that wherever Tooru is, he’ll see it. Tooru’s always glued to his phone examining some volleyball lineup or telling Hajime that his horoscope has him doomed for some bad luck this week. Hajime just wants Tooru to see the text and know that nothing’s changed, even with the new diagnosis. No matter what  _ does  _ change, it will take more than a biomagnetic shock to get rid of Hajime. 

Later that day, Hajime’s doing laundry when he hears a banging on the front door and knows it’s Tooru. He yells, “Give me a goddamn second!” and finishes throwing his towels into the drying before yanking the door open. He can feel Tooru’s barely concealed relief, still laced with the nerves and the anxiety and the exhaustion. The exhaustion is new, but Hajime is just glad to see Tooru’s worn  _ Matrix  _ t-shirt and curly hair. 

“Iwa-chan,” Tooru huffs, like nothing is wrong, like he was over here just yesterday. “Don’t make your guests wait, it’s rude.” 

Hajime rolls his eyes, holding the door open. “I have other things to do besides waiting on you hand and foot.” 

“What could possibly be more important than me?” Tooru says, stepping around him into the house, careful not to touch. 

They don’t talk about the touching thing. They just lie on Hajime’s bedroom floor and do homework together, and Hajime shows Tooru all the classwork he’s missed, and Tooru whines that it’s  _ so much.  _ When Tooru tosses a pencil at Hajime’s nose, Hajime smacks it into the ground with a loud thump, and Tooru gasps. 

“No need to be so violent, Iwa-chan!” 

“Don’t be such a brat, then,” Hajime snaps. 

“You weren’t listening to me,” Tooru says. “I’ve been gone for three days, haven’t you missed having some intellectual conversation in your life?” 

“I’ve been enjoying the peace and quiet.” 

“Some of us have  _ thoughts,  _ Iwa-chan, not that you’d understand about—”

Hajime throws the pencil back at him, smacking him square into his forehead, and the split-second of pure surprise that flashes in Tooru’s wide brown eyes makes Hajime’s body go warm, for some reason. Something in his stomach squirms. 

“So violent,” Tooru whines, his pretty face scrunching up into something pouty, and Hajime tries to shove away the squirmy feeling, unsuccessfully. “My face is extremely valuable. You shouldn’t attack it.” 

“Your face is hideous,” Hajime tells him, glad that Tooru can’t sense his own biomagnetic field. Of course Tooru knows he’s pretty, but he doesn’t need to know that Hajime thinks so. 

Tooru waves that away, like he always does, the biomagnetism around them settling again. It’s not uncomfortable to be so close to him, not today, until Tooru purses his lips and says, “I want to try something.” 

Immediately Hajime’s whole body goes alert. His brain flashes back to Tooru saying  _ “Come here,”  _ and the almost irresistible pull that drew Hajime across the room to him. “What?” he says, cautious. 

“I want to see how close you have to be,” Tooru says. “To feel my emotions. I need to know the range of the biomagnetic field.” 

“I can feel it from here,” Hajime says, still careful, and Tooru makes a face. 

“Well—” He bites the inside of his cheek. “Alright. Let’s see how far away you have to go before you stop feeling it.” 

Hajime doesn’t say that he could feel Tooru’s biomagnetism from through the door earlier, he doesn’t say that he could feel Tooru’s impatience and anxiety before he even let him inside the house. “Okay,” he says instead. 

So Tooru sits on the bed against the wall, Hajime’s pillow in his lap, and Hajime tries sitting at the desk, then standing by the door, then standing at the top of the stairs. The problem is that Hajime knows Tooru so well. He’s been sensing Tooru’s emotions his whole life, in one way or another, and no matter how far he gets, he can still guess how Tooru’s feeling. He’s not sure if it’s the biomagnetism or just intuition, and it’s a little worrying to think that even if the specialists fix Tooru’s biomagnetic field, Hajime will still have a front-row seat to Tooru’s emotions. 

It’s bound to get exhausting. Scratch that, it already is exhausting. Everything about Tooru is exhausting. 

Hajime doesn’t want to examine that particular train of thought. 

“I think it’s sort of faded now,” Hajime says, once he’s standing on the middle of the staircase. Tooru blinks owlishly at him from the bed, through Hajiime’s open bedroom door. 

“Sort of?” 

“I don’t know, dumbass, it’s not like I can see the air vibrating.”

“What if I get angry, though?” Tooru muses. “That’s supposed to make the field stronger, so you’d need to be further away if I was angry.” 

“You want me to piss you off?” Hajime’s already thinking of things he could say to make Tooru mad—he could say they saw a UFO at school while he was absent, or that he showed Tooru’s fangirls a photo of his bedhead. Or he could bring up Kageyama. But Hajime’s not sure he wants to bring up Kageyama. 

“Stop it,” says Tooru. “I know that face you’re making. You’re coming up with ways to be mean to me!” He throws the pillow toward Hajime, hard enough that it sails across the hallway and skids towards the stairs, rolling down to his feet. Hajime grabs it and bounds back up the stairs, heading into the bedroom. 

“It looks like I have to be about a few rooms away before I stop sensing things,” he says. 

Tooru twists his mouth to the side. Hajime can tell this isn’t what he wanted to hear, and he wonders why the specialists hadn’t told him this already—what have they been running diagnostics on, exactly? 

“But the further you are the more the feelings fade,” Tooru says, and Hajime nods. Tooru sighs. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll just have to be careful, then. It will be hard keeping the paparazzi at arm’s length. You’ll have to be my bodyguard, Iwa-chan.” 

“I’m already your babysitter,” Hajime says. “Against my own will.” 

“Rude.” Tooru clicks his tongue. “If anything, I’m  _ your  _ babysitter. Well. Maybe your personal coach. Or the dog trainer. After all, someone had to domesticate you.”

Hajime shoves the pillow down over his face, muffling Tooru’s wails of protest, but he’s careful not to touch him, he’s careful to step back once Tooru shoves him off, he’s careful not to get too close. 

This is the second rule. Don’t get too close to him. 

* * *

The specialists call Tooru “patient zero.” A prototype. The first known instance of whatever-the-fuck is wrong with him, an anomaly, a medical miracle. Hajime feels restless when he hears them use the nickname for the first time— “Keep an eye on patient zero”—first of all because Tooru has a name, he’s not just a patient in a study. And second because, well. Tooru is already such a lonely person. He has crowds and crowds of acquaintances and fans, sure, but Hajime’s one of Tooru’s only real friends, the only one who has seen Tooru cry and sleep and eat chocolate and cuddle with his mom. 

It seems unfair for Tooru to be alone in this, too. 

Since that first day, no one has told Hajime any new information about the biomagnetism, but the specialists bring Tooru in every Sunday afternoon for testing. On Sundays, Tooru used to hang back after practice and keep serving across the net to a reluctant Hajime, so Hajime can tell that the testing is frustrating for him. And a few weeks later, the specialists begin to show up at school, too, to “observe” the way people interact with Tooru’s biomagnetic field. 

Today, they’re eating lunch in the classroom and the specialists are lurking in the back of the room, taking notes on their clipboards and snickering with each other. Hajime is sitting next to Tooru with his back to the specialists, but he can feel their eyes on him, his neck prickling every time he imagines he can hear them whispering. Tooru feels restless, too. Tooru loves attention, but this isn’t the good kind of attention, and Hajime can tell from the too-loud tone of his voice that Tooru’s trying desperately to perform for the specialists. Except he’s not sure how to perform. No one knows what the specialists are hoping to see. 

“Let me guess first,” Hanamaki says, unwrapping his bento box across the table. “Angry?” He and Matsukawa have made a game out of trying to put a name to whatever Tooru’s feeling, but even though everyone can feel the moods bleeding off him, Hanamaki never manages to interpret the emotions exactly right. 

“You always guess angry,” says Matsukawa. “There are different emotions, you know.” 

“I dunno,” Hanamaki says, shrugging. “He always feels angry to me.”

“I’m not angry,” Tooru says. “Anyway, this isn’t a fun game, you guys have no emotional intelligence. The only emotions you feel are  _ volleyball  _ and  _ food. _ ” 

“You forgot about  _ tits, _ ” says Hanamaki wisely. 

Tooru sniffs. “You’re never going to get a girl with the emotional range of a sea sponge,” he says. “Women like sensitive men. You need to get more in touch with your feminine side or you’re going to be alone forever.” 

Hanamaki bickers back, and Hajime focuses on his food, trying to block out Tooru’s annoying voice. Hanamaki and Tooru like to talk about girls a lot—who in their class is dating who, who confessed to Tooru this week, things like that. Hajime sometimes catches them discussing this dating reality show they both pretend not to watch. Matsukawa actually has a girlfriend right now, although she goes to another high school and Hajime has only met her once. 

In middle school, Hajime kept waiting for his own interest in girls to crop up. But it hasn’t, and Hajime is beginning to have a horrible suspicion as to why. It’s like staring at the sun so long you go blind, or feeling cold so long you get desensitized to it. Hajime grew up curled under covers with someone ethereally beautiful, and Tooru has ruined his eyes. 

“How was your doctor’s appointment yesterday?” Hajime asks, once Tooru has finished nagging Hanamaki about being in tune with his emotions. Tooru glances at him, a piece of his hair falling into his eyes, the sun from the window illuminating the halo of his curls, and Hajime wants to throw something at Tooru for ruining his eyes, but then Hajime would have to explain himself, and, well. He’ll wait until practice when he has a better excuse for his violence. 

“It was fine,” Tooru says, sounding suspicious. “Why?” 

Hajime shrugs. “Just wondering.” 

“They’re all the same,” Tooru says, picking up his chopsticks. “I walk in, blah blah blah, they put wires all over my body, they give me x-rays, they leave and gossip about me where I can’t hear. It’s very dull.” 

“What have they learned?” 

Tooru squints at him. “What do you mean?” 

Hajime feels thrown for a loop, like Tooru is purposely misunderstanding him, purposely trying to be difficult. “They’re running all these tests,” Hajime says, feeling a bit stupid. “What are they learning? What are they telling you?” 

“They’re not telling me anything,” Tooru says. 

Hanamaki and Matsukawa both go quiet. Hajime furrows his eyebrows, watching Tooru turn back to his lunch, picking up his chopsticks with tense fingers, the anxiety in his biomagnetism rising. Tooru doesn’t want to talk about this. Hanamaki and Matsukawa might not be able to read Tooru’s moods perfectly even though he’s a walking feelings broadcast, but Hajime can, and he knows this one: Tooru is putting up walls, pushing them away. 

“That’s bullshit,” Hajime says, and Tooru’s frequency spikes quickly, his shoulders tightening. Hajime isn’t going to let him get away with it, though. “Do you just not want to tell me? I can ask your mother if I want, you know.” 

“They’re not telling her anything either,” Tooru says, his voice tight, irritated. “I told you, they go behind closed doors to gossip. They keep saying they can’t answer any questions until they have  _ conclusive evidence,  _ whatever that means.” 

“So they won’t tell you anything?” 

“That’s what I said, Iwa-chan, maybe try to keep up.” 

Hajime glares at him and raises his hand automatically to flick Tooru’s temple before he remembers: don’t touch him. Hajime drops his hand on the table, feeling even more annoyed. “Well, you never tell me anything. You just disappear off to this mysterious doctor’s office, how do I know they’re not testing illegal drugs on you or something?” 

“Maybe the biomagnetism thing isn’t even real,” Hanamaki suggests. “And the doctors just want fame from publishing a paper about it.” 

“That could be possible,” Matsukawa agrees. 

“But we can feel it,” Hajime says. Of course there’s something wrong with Tooru—everyone was in the gym when Kageyama collapsed. Tooru’s kept his emotions reigned in better since then, but it’s impossible not to walk into a room and immediately know whether he’s happy or sad, the energy radiating off him like heat. 

“Well, yeah,” says Matsukawa. “But maybe he’s just, you know, really expressive, like he was saying.” 

“Yeah,” says Hanamaki. “Maybe that’s why all the girls like him. It’s just the emotional range or whatever.” 

“Stop,” snaps Tooru, and they all look at him, surprised—normally Tooru loves hearing about his fans, but Hajime can feel the anger rising off him, his face red, his mouth twisted. Too late, Hajime sees his hand clenched around the chopsticks, knuckles straining. “Stop talking about me like—like I’m not here. I’m sitting right in front of you. I’m not a fucking test subject.” 

“Sorry,” says Matsukawa immediately, but the red doesn’t fade from Tooru’s face. Hajime is just about to say fuck the rules and touch him, even if Tooru’s anger hurts Hajime—burns him, shocks him, whatever—just to calm Tooru down. 

But before Hajime can reach out, the specialists are there, pushing Hajime’s chair to the side. 

“Oikawa,” the woman says, touching the base of Tooru’s neck with her gloved hand, and the man takes Hajime’s shoulder and pulls him out of his seat. 

“Oi,” Hajime says, but the specialists already have their blue gloves on both of Tooru’s arms, pushing the chairs out of the way to pull him away from the table. Tooru’s hair is in his face, and the classroom has gone silent again. Hajime can hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears, his thighs pressed to the back of the desk, as the woman puts a metal sensor to Tooru’s heart and it beeps once, loud and piercing, into the silence. 

“He’s a liability,” the woman tells the man. “Get him to the car, immediately.” 

“Don’t touch me,” Tooru starts, but the man snaps, 

“There are people in this room, Oikawa, do you want to hurt them?” 

Hajime feels it flash through Tooru’s boiling anger then: 

Fear. 

The emotion is gone as soon as it comes, because the specialists have hurried Tooru out of the room, into the crowded hallways, shouting at students to get out of the way. Their voices leave a ringing silence, and when Hajime manages to look over at Hanamaki and Matsukawa, they’re both red, sitting stiffly in their seats. 

“I didn’t mean,” Hanamaki begins, but he doesn’t finish. Hajime doesn’t expect him to. He’s still reeling from the suddenness of it—how quickly it all blew out of proportion. Hajime knows Tooru’s not dangerous. But he feels that same heart-sinking fear that he felt on the day the specialists first showed up, that  _ oh, god, no.  _

This is the third rule. 

Tooru is not allowed to get angry. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for the lovely comments on the last chapter <3 i hope you enjoy this one as well!

This time Hajime doesn’t wait for Tooru to find his way to his house. Hajime can’t trust Tooru when he’s upset, so he bikes down the street to his house and lets himself inside. Tooru’s mom doesn’t seem surprised to see him. 

“Tooru’s not home yet,” she says, sounding sad. “They took him in for some emergency tests.” She tries to smile for Hajime, wiping her hands on her dishtowel, but Hajime can see the pain in the lines of her face. For the first time it hits him, like a dull punch to the stomach, that Tooru’s mom can’t touch him, either. Tooru is her whole world, and they’ve always been so cuddly, watching movies together on school nights, and she’s the one who taught Tooru how to diffuse his hair when they were in seventh grade. For a while she did his hair for him every day, although Hajime isn’t “allowed” to tell anyone about this. 

Tooru is a mama’s boy, and now the specialists are taking her son away. 

Hajime tries to swallow. “I’ll just wait in his room,” he says, and she nods, turning away, but not before he sees the wetness in her eyes. 

Hajime’s stomach feels heavy as he bounds up the stairs to Tooru’s bedroom, flopping down onto Tooru’s bed. It feels strange to be inside this room without the hum of Tooru’s frequency, as though the room has ceased to be Tooru’s and is now an empty shell, the volleyball posters peeling off the walls, one of the glow-in-the-stars fallen off the ceiling, the collection of hair gels and skin products forlorn on the vanity. Hajime tries to do his English vocabulary homework, but his mind keeps wandering to the way Tooru’s red face looked right before the specialists knocked Hajime’s chair over. 

He feels Tooru come home before he hears him. 

Hajime scrambles into a sitting position—he’d been lying on his back gazing at the sticky stars, and somehow he’d lost track of time, and he blinks blearily at Tooru’s alarm clock. It’s nearly seven p.m. Downstairs, Hajime can hear the rumble of Tooru and his mom talking, and he can feel the heaviness of Tooru’s emotions. 

Hajime hastily shoves his English textbook into his backpack and rubs his sweaty hands on the comforter. He can feel Tooru dragging his feet up the stairs, he can feel the dark cloud of Tooru’s distress coming closer. Hajime’s not good at being nice, using comforting words, being  _ in touch with his emotions  _ like Tooru wants—what if Tooru comes in here and Hajime only makes him angry again? 

It’s too late to back out. Tooru’s already opening the door and coming inside, dropping his book-bag on the floor, and for a moment he doesn’t see Hajime, he just slumps against the edge of the open door. Hajime can see the tremble of his shoulders, the droop of his damp hair—it’s no longer poufy. At the doctor’s office they must have gotten him wet somehow. 

Hajime clears his throat, and Tooru jumps, shock jolting through the air. His eyes go wild when they meet Hajime’s, red around the edges, but just as quickly he blinks it away and straightens up again. 

“Iwa-chan,” he says, forcing one of his obnoxious smiles. “Are you doing indecent things in my bed?” 

Hajime clenches his fists. “What the fuck, Oikawa?” 

Tooru actually  _ laughs.  _ He has the audacity to fake a laugh and think Hajime will believe it, tucking his droopy hair behind his ear, shutting the bedroom door behind him. 

“So defensive, Iwa-chan,” he says. “You know what they say about people who protest too much.”

“I wasn’t doing  _ anything  _ in your bed,” Hajime grits out. He couldn’t give a fuck about Tooru’s idiotic teasing, but the fact that Tooru’s standing there acting like nothing’s wrong—that’s what really pisses Hajime off. He’s been waiting here all afternoon worrying his ass off about Tooru, and what? Tooru’s going to keep pretending? He can pretend for everyone else, the specialists, the doctors, whatever, but he’s not going to pretend for Hajime. “I was waiting for you.” 

“Ah,” says Tooru, and Hajime doesn’t miss the way his smile trembles, even though he’s obviously trying to force it not to. “So you  _ were _ thinking about me! You really can be sweet, Iwa-chan—” 

Hajime grabs the blanket from Tooru’s bed and uses it to tackle him, backward onto the fluffy rug. Tooru yelps, and Hajime can feel the biomagnetism burning through the fabric separating them, but it’s nothing like touching Tooru’s bare skin. It’s tolerable, and Hajime shoves the blanket over Tooru’s face to stifle his shouting until he’s sitting on Tooru’s chest, ready to demand to know how he’s feeling. Hajime can’t be gentle and coaxing, this is the only way he knows how to get the truth out of Tooru, but he needs to know what’s going on. He needs to know that Tooru is okay. 

Hajime pulls the blanket away, ready to say, “What did they do to you, Shittykawa,” but he freezes, the rush of cold, aching sadness shooting up his arm like ice. 

Tooru’s face is red and blotchy, tears streaking down his cheeks. 

“Shit,” Hajime blurts, scrambling off Tooru’s chest. Tooru curls in on himself immediately, burying his face into the blanket, his shoulders shaking with muffled sobs. Hajime’s ears ring with his own stupidity. What the fuck was he thinking? Tooru’s had a hell of a day, the last thing he needs is Hajime ripping into him the second he comes home. 

Hajime doesn’t know what to do. He’s not equipped for this. When they were little and Tooru started crying, Hajime would always hug him or hit him, depending on the seriousness of the situation and who was watching. But now he can’t do either of those things, because he’s not allowed to touch. No one is allowed to touch. Tooru hasn’t been touched in almost a year, except by those blue medical gloves, and Hajime has to fight to find his voice. 

“Oi,” he says, and then, forcing the awkwardness down, he says, “Tooru.” They never use given names in public anymore, Tooru says they’re too old, but it’s just the two of them right now, and, and Tooru’s crying. Hajime has fucked up, he has to fix this. “Tooru, I’m sorry.” 

“Shut up,” Tooru bites out harshly, the bottom half of his face still burrowing in the blanket. “Shut up and go away.” 

“I’m not going to go away,” Hajime says. “You’re upset.” He hesitates. “I’m going to go get you water.” 

He’s grateful for the tactile, practical task, and when he returns to Tooru’s room with the cool glass of water in his hand, Tooru’s lying on his back on the blanket, rubbing at his eyes. He’s not crying anymore but his chest is still rising and falling unevenly, and Hajime can feel how exhausted he is, how choked up all his emotions are. 

He puts the water down by Tooru’s head and sits near him, his back against the footboard of Tooru’s bed. The silence is awkward, but Hajime forces himself not to dwell on it. They’re not the friends who sit around and talk feelings all the time, but that’s going to have to change eventually, since Tooru is literally bleeding emotions. And even if it weren’t for the biomagnetism, he’s upset, and Hajime’s his best friend. He’s not just going to let Tooru cry alone. 

Eventually Tooru half-sits, grabbing the water and holding it in both hands, sipping at it. The redness hasn’t faded from his face, and his voice is all cracked when he says, “What do you want, Iwa-chan?”

“You don’t have to call me that,” Hajime says. He doesn’t know what makes him say it, but he’s flushed and embarrassed and damn well determined to make Tooru feel better. “I mean, you can call me Hajime, there’s no one around.” 

Tooru stares at him for a moment, the frequency wavering like he’s not sure what emotion to feel. “Why would I do that?” 

Hajime growls at him, and Tooru jerks back, and then a small laugh slips out of him, his eyes crinkling for just a second. Just a second, but the heaviness in the room lifts slightly.

“I didn’t know you were  _ literally  _ an animal, Iwa-chan,” he says. Then he pauses, glancing down at the water. His eyes are still red around the edges, and he clears his throat before saying, “Hajime.” 

Hajime feels very warm. He’s forgotten what his name sounds like in Tooru’s voice. It’s almost like touching him, an oddly intimate feeling. 

“Tooru,” he says back, gruffly. “What happened?” 

Tooru shrugs, looking back down. His hair is drying funny, pressed flat against the back of his head, but Hajime’s not going to tell him. “They said I was too dangerous to be around anybody, so that’s why they made me leave school. They took me straight to the lab to run tests while I was still angry. They gave me this—this shot, to keep my emotions running high? I don’t know, they don’t explain things.”

Hajime stars at him, his brain lagging behind. “The lab,” he repeats. “Did you say the  _ lab _ ?”

Tooru looks at him like he’s slow, which, okay, maybe Hajime  _ is _ slow, but that’s because Tooru doesn’t fucking tell him anything—this is exactly the kind of thing Tooru doesn’t tell him. “Yes, Hajime,” he says. “Where did you think they were taking me, Coney Island?” 

“What the fuck,” Hajime says. “I thought you were going to a doctor! Or, I dunno, a hospital or something.” 

“Of course not,” Tooru says. “The specialists aren’t doctors. Do you think doctors believe in hyper-powered biomagnetic fields? The doctors basically think we all have some crazy form of Munchaunsen’s syndrome.” 

“They think you’re making it up?” 

“The doctors couldn’t find anything physically wrong with me,” Tooru says. “Remember? I told you, there’s no conclusive evidence.” 

“You didn’t tell me  _ this,”  _ Hajime says. His mind is spinning. “Goddammit, Tooru, why didn’t you say something? What kind of fucking lab is it? Is this some kind of illegal backdoor operation?” 

“No,” says Tooru. “It’s a very credible lab. My mom signed all the consent forms. As soon as they can get proof, they’ll be able to get me better care.” He suddenly looks even more exhausted, propping himself up on one shaky wrist, setting the water down. “That’s what all the tests are for.” 

Hajime repeats this to himself. “So they’re just scientists.” 

“Yes,” says Tooru. 

“So Hanamaki was right,” Hajime says. “They just want to figure you out, like—like a research project.” 

“I don’t know,” Tooru says, rubbing his face with his sleeves. “I don’t know, okay, Hajime, and I don’t really care, because no one else can help me, no one can find out what’s wrong with me, and I don’t care, I don’t care what they do to me.” 

Hajime can feel his heart beating slowly in his chest. He’s never seen Tooru look this defeated, not even when Coach pulled him out of the match to put Kageyama in. “Don’t say that,” he says. 

Tooru laughs again, cracked and bitter. “Fine,” he says. “As long as it doesn’t interfere with volleyball, I don’t care what they do to me.” 

That’s not much better, but Hajime decides not to push it. Tooru has been through enough today, more than enough for an entire year, so even though he wants to ask what exactly the specialists  _ are  _ doing to Tooru, he files it away for later. Tooru’s obviously not ready to talk about it, and honestly, maybe Hajime isn’t ready to hear. 

“D’you want to watch a movie?” he asks. “You can choose it.” 

“Such a gentleman, Iwa-chan,” Tooru says, rubbing at his mouth, and Hajime will give him points for trying, even though it’s obvious Tooru’s heart’s not in it. Still, Tooru crawls to the shelves of DVDs he has and takes his time picking one out, and Hajime goes to the bed, building a pile of pillows so that when Tooru comes to curl up next to him, there are layers between them. 

Not for the first time, Hajime wants to shove all the layers away. But he knows there are rules, no matter how much he aches to break them. 

He shoves his hands between his thighs while the movie starts up, and Tooru goes quiet for a long while, almost until the middle of the movie. It’s not until the aliens have invaded Earth that Tooru says quietly, almost a whisper, “Does it hurt?”

“What?” 

“When I get angry,” Tooru says. He’s gazing at the screen, the lights reflecting off his glasses so Hajime can’t see his eyes. “When you’re sitting next to me, does it hurt? The specialists say...they say that I could hurt someone else, like I hurt Tobio-chan.” 

Hajime remembers Kageyama and bites his cheek, hard. But that was the angriest Tooru’s ever been. Today was nothing like that. No one was hurt. 

“No,” he says, firmly. “It doesn’t hurt.” 

“What does it feel like?” 

“It feels like…” Hajime doesn’t know how to explain, and he wishes he was better at words, but he’s not, so he just says, “It just feels like the air’s more solid, like everything’s more tense. We know you’re angry, we can feel the mood shift in the room. But it doesn’t hurt.” 

Tooru is quiet again. Onscreen, an alien vaguely resembling a woman confesses that she can never love her human counterpart; they’re too different. “Is it scary?” he asks finally. 

Hajime tries to make out his expression, but it’s dark in the room now and the only thing he can see is the alien’s reflection in Tooru’s glasses. He wishes again, fiercely, that they could touch—he wishes it so fiercely that he thinks for a moment it has to come true. 

But it doesn’t come true, so Hajime tries the next best thing. “Maybe it’s scary for other people,” he says. “If they don’t know you. But not for me. It’s never scary for me.” 

If Tooru is crying now, he does it soundlessly, and in the reflection of his glasses, the alien and her human begin to embrace. 

* * *

By their second year, there are dozens of rumors about Tooru. There have always been rumors about Tooru—whether he would go to Shiratorizawa, who he’s dating, what he did to make Kageyama turn around and run when he saw Tooru in the halls—and the rumors about his medical history are no different. More days than not, the specialists are lingering somewhere around Aoba Johsai, and they’ve pulled Tooru out of class several times, sometimes because he got agitated but sometimes for no discernible reason. On these days, Hajime always goes to Tooru’s house immediately after school, skipping practice, and they curl up under Tooru’s blankets and watch bad movies.

Coach never questions Hajime, but Hajime can feel him watching them sometimes, and he hopes Coach isn’t thinking what Hajime’s thinking, namely: are he and Tooru too codependent? But even if they are, who would take care of Tooru if not Hajime? What would happen to him, with nobody to pick him up after the grueling hours at the lab?

They still don’t talk about the lab. Hajime has asked a few times, but Tooru dodges the questions, and he never confirms any of the rumors, he just smiles flirtatiously at all the girls and doesn’t deny anything. Everyone can feel Tooru’s moods the moment he walks into a room, but the general gossip consensus just calls Tooru _an open book._ They say he’s just so _charismatic,_ he’s _in touch with his emotions,_ he just has a _magnetic personality._

It makes Hajime want to punch somebody. Especially since Tooru has about the fakest personality possible for someone who quite literally can’t hide his emotions. 

Hanamaki is into the gossip, and he always reports back to them at lunch, when they’re watching the first years play kickball out in the courtyard. “The latest hot news is that you have bipolar,” he announces. “But it’s not all bad. Miria from Class B says that all romantic heroes are a little bit bipolar.”

“That’s bullcrap,” Hajime says. 

“Hush, Iwa-chan,” says Tooru, tossing a handful of grass over Hajime’s clean pants. “Your jealousy is showing.”

Hajime scowls. “Bipolar isn’t romantic, assface.” 

“Well, it’s better than erectile dysfunc—”

“Anyway,” Hajime interrupts, jabbing his chopstick into Tooru’s thigh and making him yelp, far too loudly. Hanamaki and Matsukawa snicker, and then Matsukawa says, 

“Why don’t you tell them the truth, Tooru? If you just told Miria and a few others, they’d tell the whole school by tomorrow.” 

“I prefer to remain mysterious,” Tooru says loftily, and Hajime glares at him again. 

“He just likes the attention,” Hajime says. “If everyone knows the answer, they’ll stop talking about it so much, and we can’t have  _ that. _ ” 

“It’s not my fault they’re all fascinated with me,” Tooru says, waving Hajime away. “If the rumors about the biomagnetism die down, they’ll just start gossiping about my love life again. Believe me, it’s exhausting being the main source of everyone’s entertainment, but one of us has to do it, and it makes sense for it to be the best-looking one, doesn’t it?” 

Matsukawa rolls his eyes. “How’s that working out for you, by the way? Your love life.” 

“See, even  _ you _ ’re curious about my life, Mattsun.” 

“I was just asking as a friendly gesture,” Matsukawa says. “Believe me, it’s not keeping me awake at night.” 

Hajime snorts, and Tooru pouts, using his own chopsticks to poke Hajime in the thigh. Hajime swats him away, trying to force down the flush that begins to build when Tooru leaves the tip of his chopstick pressed there, right below the seam running down the side of Hajime’s leg.

“Nobody has my attention at the moment,” Tooru says. “They’re all very same-y.” 

“That’s so misogynistic,” Matsukawa says. Tooru huffs, sliding the chopstick along Hajime’s seam, and Hajime’s chest burns. It’s not even Tooru touching him, but the slide leaves tingles all along his leg, and it’s frustrating, it’s just—frustrating. 

“It’s not just girls. All of you are same-y too,” Tooru says. “I know that you three have a group-chat without me, you know. Makki showed it to me. It’s all the same five volleyball memes. Where’s the flavor? The creativity?” 

“Oh, as if your life doesn’t revolve around volleyball,” says Matsukawa. He pitches his voice higher. “ _ Iwa-chan, come practice serves with me! I’m going to be the best! Wait until Tobio-chan gets to high school, I’m going to crush his soul!”  _

“I do  _ not  _ sound like that,” Tooru says, digging the chopstick into Hajime’s leg painfully before dropping it entirely. Hanamaki is laughing, and then Matsukawa starts laughing, too, while Tooru berates them for bullying him. Hajime takes the brief respite to grab Tooru’s water bottle and take several long drinks. Tooru is very annoying. Very, very annoying. That’s all. The same old Tooru, just more annoying. 

  
  


* * *

Alright, so, maybe Tooru is a  _ little bit  _ attractive, in an objective way. But this is nothing new, nothing Hajime didn’t already know. Tooru’s been voted “Best Smile” in every yearbook for their entire lives, and Hajime knows what he looks like after taking a bath at night and diffusing his pretty conditioned hair, when he puts on those too-small, too-soft alien pajamas and gets his favorite AREA-51 mug and chamomile tea and sits on the living rug room lit up by soft yellow light, and okay, yes, Tooru’s very pretty, distractingly pretty, but  _ everyone _ knows that. 

So it means nothing that Hajime keeps staring at the thick beige sweater sliding off Tooru’s right shoulder, revealing the sharp line of his collarbone and the paint-splatter of freckles across his upper arm. It means nothing that Hajime keeps forgetting to eat his ramen. It means nothing that he hasn’t heard a word that Tooru has said in the last fifteen minutes because he’s been watching the way Tooru touches his bunny teeth to his bottom lip, a new nervous tick. It means  _ nothing.  _

“Iwa-chan,” says Tooru, hiking up his sweater sleeve, and Hajime jerks guiltily, forcing his eyes back to Tooru’s face, but that’s no better, because Tooru’s doing the thing with his teeth again, just  _ resting  _ them on his lip, something Hajime’s ninety-five percent sure he picked up from Takeru, and that’s just embarrassing. Hajime grabs his chopsticks aggressively, glaring at Tooru’s bowl instead, and Tooru says, irritably, “Are you even listening to me?” 

“You’re talking about Fukurōdani’s first-year setter,” Hajime says. 

“That was like an hour ago.” 

“We’ve only been here for twenty minutes,” Hajime argues, his face hot. Tooru hikes up his sweater again, and Hajime wants to demand to know why he’s wearing clothes that don’t fit him, but then Tooru will know he was looking, and fuck,  _ fuck.  _ It’s nothing. It means nothing. To save his ass, he grabs onto the first thought in his mind— “Why do you care about Fukurōdani’s first-years anyway? Is the kid even a starter?”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure Akaashi-chan is gay.”

Hajime stares at him, his mouth dropping open. Tooru is busily cutting up his noodles into bite-sized pieces because he says slurping them is too messy, but Hajime is still trying to process what he just said. Tooru, with the chucky sweater slipping indecently off his body, with his stupidly pretty freckles, with his plush dented bottom lip—Tooru suggesting casually that a stranger is gay. 

It shouldn’t set off alarm bells in Hajime’s head. It shouldn’t, because none of this means  _ anything.  _ It’s not like  _ Hajime  _ is gay, and definitely not for  _ Tooru.  _

“What are you talking about?” 

Tooru hums, taking his obnoxiously neat bite and grabbing his phone. “I’ve been stalking his social media,” he says. “I thought, you know, someone as pretty as that, I wonder what his girlfriend looks like. I thought, maybe I finally have some competition.” 

“He’s fifteen,” Hajime says, the least relevant response but the only one he can muster. 

“Look at that face,” Tooru says, turning his phone to show Hajime an Instagram page with a very artistic plant-and-poloraid feed, and Hajime wants to push it away, because he knows what Akaashi Keiji looks like, but Tooru clicks on a picture and says, “There’s nothing heterosexual about those shorts.” 

Okay, the shorts are pretty short, but nothing shorter than the obnoxious women’s gym shorts Tooru wears sometimes. “So what?” Hajime says. “So he’s wearing shorts. That doesn’t mean anything.” 

Tooru sniffs. “You have no understanding of fashion, Iwa-chan.” He takes the phone back, scrolling down the page. “I just get a  _ sense  _ about these things _.  _ You wouldn’t understand.” 

“You’re right, I  _ don’t  _ understand,” Hajime snaps. He shouldn’t be pissed off, Tooru hasn’t said anything offensive, but something about him casually guessing at strangers’ sexualities while Hajime has been trying furiously not to stare at his collarbone—it’s too much. It’s too close to home. “Don’t stereotype people, Shittykawa. Why do you care what he dresses like?” 

Tooru blinks up at him, wide-eyed and surprised. Hajime can tell from his steady, calm frequency that there’s no malice behind that innocent look—Tooru genuinely doesn’t know what he’s doing wrong. “We follow each other,” he says, waving the phone. “On Instagram. Some people care about getting to know others, Iwa-chan. You should try socializing a bit, or I’ll start to think you’re dependent on me.” 

Hajime grinds his jaw. Oh, that’s rich—Tooru calling  _ him  _ dependent when Hajime is the only person who stops him from working himself to death on the volleyball court, the one who coddles Tooru after the specialists dehumanize him on some lab table. “Oh, is that what you call this? Stalking your competition to find dirt on them, so you can, what? Threaten to ruin their lives if they beat you?” 

Tooru stares at him. His frequency ticks slowly, confused, and Hajime is breathing harder than he should be, his hands tight on his ramen bowl. Tooru blinks at him, setting his phone down, and asks, “Are you homophobic, Iwa-chan?” 

Hajime can feel a vein pop in his head. “What?” he snaps. What the fuck? Where did that come from? Tooru’s the one who’s picking on random first-years, calling them gay for being too pretty. “Of course fucking not, what are you talking about?” 

“What are you so angry for, then?” Tooru asks. “Akaashi-chan can be gay if he wants to.” 

“You don’t even know if he’s gay!” 

“Well, not officially.” Tooru tips his head. “But it doesn’t matter if he is, right, so what’s the problem?” 

Hajime glares at him, ready to retort, but then what Tooru’s saying catches up with him.  _ It doesn’t matter if he is.  _ If he doesn’t care, then why did Tooru bring it up in the first place? And how the fuck has he turned the conversation around so Hajime looks like the homophobic one? Hajime’s the one who’s been trying not to stare at Tooru’s mouth too much, the one whose eyes have been ruined by Tooru’s stupidly gorgeous face. 

“You know what,” and Hajime doesn’t even know what to say, when did Tooru get so goddamn annoying? Why is Hajime friends with him, again? “I don’t even want to know. Bring your gossip to Hanamaki, not me.” 

“So rude, Iwa-chan,” is all Tooru says, and for some goddamn  _ confusing  _ fucking reason, Hajime can feel Tooru’s mood dip as he goes back to Instagram, something slightly sadder in his frequency. Hajime doesn’t have the brainpower to decipher it right now. He doesn’t have time for Tooru’s emotions, not on top of his own confusing emotions. he doesn’t have the brainpower for it even if Tooru’s biomagnetic field is all around him, clambering for attention. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> normally i'm not a fan of miscommunication as a plot device but i loved writing hajime as a dude who has no idea how to communicate lol. i lowkey feel like he's super emotionally constipated ahaha


	3. Chapter 3

Even after all of this, Hajime doesn’t expect the girl. 

Sana Temari transfers into their homeroom during the beginning of third quarter. The rumors, according to Hanamaki, say that she used to be on the basketball team at a prestigious Tokyo high school before getting kicked out for petty crime. Hajime isn’t sure he believes that, but Sana _does_ sort of look like someone with a criminal record—she drives a motorbike to school and has short, cropped hair. 

When she transfers, Hajime acknowledges her presence and then forgets about her, going back to pouring over the team lineup with Matsukawa. Sana isn’t one of the pretty, girly girls who crowd the stands of their practice to watch Tooru play, or one of the popular girls who get up the courage to confess to Tooru every other week. She keeps to herself in the classroom, as if she thinks she’s different from everyone else. 

Hajime should have paid attention when Tooru said that thing about everyone at Seijou being _same-y,_ but somehow, Hajime never manages to pay attention to the things that end up being important, until it’s too late. 

They’re all bundled up in the club room during lunch one day, snow drifting against the windowpanes, and Hajime is sitting closer to Tooru than he should be, because it’s the first time all week they’ve been able to eat without the specialists lurking. Hanamaki is watching a video on his phone, and Matsukawa is reading a book his girlfriend gave him, and Hajime is leaning against the cool glass of the windows, watching Tooru scroll through his phone. It’s oddly soothing. Tooru’s instagram feed is all aesthetic photography and fashion, and he keeps flipping between that and a text conversation he’s having with Sugawara Koushi, Karasuno’s setter, who is saved as **refreshing-kun** **♥**. The texting is all about the filters on one of Sugawara’s photos—apparently there’s someone he wants to impress—and they send each other all these emoticons that piss Hajime off when Tooru sends them to him. But it’s soothing anyway. Tooru is humming softly, and his biomagnetic field is settled and calm. 

“I want Akaachan and Refreshing-kun to be friends with each other,” he says. “Then we can have our own posse. You’re not invited, Iwa-chan.” 

Hajime rolls his eyes. As if he wants to be invited into some bitchy club Tooru tries to form. “What, you need henchmen now? The fan club isn’t enough?”  


“They’re not my henchmen,” Tooru says, wrinkling his nose. “That kind of brutish role is only fit for you.” 

“I’m not your henchman, Shittykawa.” 

“Oh, right, how could I forget? You’re the _leader_ of my fan club.” 

Hajime growls, which makes Tooru laugh, his fingers fumbling on the phone. Hajime catches a glimpse of Sawamura Daichi’s name in their text conversation before Tooru turns the phone off, setting it down on his thigh. He looks so pretty today, even Hajime can admit it to himself. Tooru is always effortlessly pretty in the winter, his cheeks tinged pink from the chilly club room, the white of his hoodie folded perfectly against his neck, and when he tilts his head, one of his curls touches his cheek. His hair looks so soft, and Hajime finds himself trying to remember what it feels like to touch Tooru’s hair, his brain searching for the memory a bit desperately. When Tooru was first learning to manage his hair, Hajime used to brush it out for him, but this was years ago, early middle school, and Hajime thinks, just for one moment, he’ll touch it, just the ends, Tooru won’t feel anything, no biomagnetism will transfer—

“I think I’m going to confess to Sana Temari,” Tooru says, to the room.

Hajime’s hand pauses, his fingers tingling, barely lifted off the ground. 

Hanamaki stops the video on his phone, and the club room goes silent. Hajime keeps staring at the soft curl on Tooru’s cheek, his brain stuck. His vision is tunneling in around him, and he dimly realizes that, _oh._ This is going to hurt, later. This is going to keep him up all night, isn’t it, this ache settling in his chest, it’s going to stay for a long while. 

“Who?” asks Matsukawa, predictably unaware of the crisis sinking deep into Hajime's bones. 

“Sana,” Tooru repeats. Her name sounds prettier in his mouth. Of course it does. Hajime is filled with the sudden aching need to hear Tooru say _Hajime._ The ache throbs against his ribcage. 

“The criminal record girl?” asks Hanamaki, putting down his phone. “ _That’s_ your type? Of all the girls you could have?” 

Tooru frowns, a line forming between his perfect eyebrows. “Don’t be rude, Makki. Sana is a very interesting person. We were assigned to work together on a project in literature class and we got to know each other.” 

“An _interesting_ person?” Hanamaki repeats. “Don’t fuck around, Oikawa. We all know you don’t like people for their personality.” 

Tooru huffs, and Hajime can feel Tooru’s biomagnetism tinge with genuine annoyance, although Hajime can barely feel anything through the numbing feeling spreading from his hands all the way up his arms. He finally puts his hand back onto the clubroom floor. He can feel the cold tile underneath him and he can’t take his eyes off Tooru’s face. He can’t move. 

“I’m not as shallow as you, Makki,” Tooru says. “I think of more than girls’ bodies.” 

“Right,” says Hanamaki. “Sure you do.” 

“Can you even—” Matsukawa begins, and then sets his book down. He rubs his upper arm, like he’s thinking, before he starts again. “If you’re dating someone, does that mean you’re allowed to touch them? I mean, would your doctors let you?” 

“Huh,” Hanamaki says. “I didn’t think about that. When you knocked into me the other day, during practice, I felt like I was having a heart attack.” 

“Makki, I’m flattered that you have such strong feelings about my touch,” Tooru says, but Hajime can feel the tense undercurrent beginning to run through his frequency. Tooru’s agitated. This isn’t how he expected them to react, Hajime realizes. Hanamaki thinks this is all a big joke, like it always is when Tooru flirts with a girl, but Tooru actually means it this time. 

Tooru _means_ it. 

Hajime is having trouble breathing.

“You know what I mean,” Hanamaki is saying, and Matsukawa nods. 

“I haven’t planned that far ahead,” Tooru says, in a voice that Hajime knows means he’s been thinking about it for days. Maybe even weeks, since Sana transferred, and god, god, how did Hajime not notice? He can feel Tooru’s fucking emotions, he thought he knew Tooru better than anybody, but Tooru has been hiding something this serious from him, choosing to reveal it to them all at once, instead of telling Hajime first. Of course Tooru doesn’t owe him anything. Of course he doesn’t, but, but, _but._

“So, what,” Hanamaki asks, “you’re going to ask her out? With all the girls confessing to you? Why not choose one of them? You don’t even know if Sana likes you.” 

“To be fair, I don’t think anyone is going to reject Oikawa,” Matsukawa says, like it pains him to say it but he’s just being reasonable. Tooru puffs up his cheeks, and through all the numbness, a little sting of affection goes through Hajime’s heart. God. He’s so cute. And Hajime is going to die. 

“Thank you, Mattsun.” 

“It’s not a compliment,” Matsukawa tells him, “just an observation of fact.” 

“Well, the _fact_ is that everybody is attracted to me,” Tooru starts. 

“Not me,” says Hanamaki. “None of us are attracted to you.” 

The little sting goes through Hajime’s heart again, this time a more painful one. God. _God._ It’s too ironic. What has he been thinking, telling himself he’s not attracted to Tooru? He’s so attracted to Tooru it’s overwhelming, he wants to touch all the places he’s been denied touching for so long, the sloping bridge of Tooru’s nose and the soft place his ear meets his jaw and the thick roots of his hair and the curve of his delicate wrist and the dents where his teeth rest on his bottom lip. 

This can’t be happening. Not now. Not like this. 

“You know what I _mean,_ Makki,” Tooru says impatiently. “I don’t want her to confess to me, anyway, that’s what always happens. I’m bored of that. I’m the one who likes her this time. I’m going to sweep her off her feet.”

Hanamaki snorts, and Matsukawa cracks a grin. “Well, good luck,” Matsukawa says. “I’m sure she’ll say yes. And then two weeks later she’ll break up with you, like all the girls you dated in middle school.” 

Tooru sticks his tongue out, and Hajime finally tears his eyes away, freezing them on the tile floor under Matsukawa’s feet instead. The ache in his chest is a dull, frightening thrum. Hajime likes Tooru, actually _likes_ him, in the worst possible way. Hajime knows that he loves Tooru, but he’s always thought it was a companionable love, a brotherly affection, and not this, not the kind of affection that makes his body go cold and numb when Tooru brings up a girl. There have been girls before. But never like this. 

Hajime has never been so terrifyingly glad that Tooru can’t feel his emotions. 

“I never expected you to go for the scary ones,” Hanamaki is saying. “Sana looks like she would step on you. Is that what you’re into? If she stepped on you, would you thank her?” 

“She’s not going to step on—” 

“Wanna bet on if she pegs him,” Matsukawa whispers, and Hanamaki starts laughing, and Tooru whines loudly that they’re making _fun_ of him, his hot embarrassment flooding the room, flooding every one of Hajime’s arteries, moving like a flush up his own neck. Hajime can’t handle this. He can’t handle any of this, and he needs to get away, find a reason to leave the room before someone asks why he’s so quiet. Hajime can’t clear his throat and tease Tooru about the girl he likes. The girl Tooru didn’t even bother telling Hajime he liked. Like Hajime means nothing to him. Like Hajime isn’t important at all. 

The bell rings, like Hajime’s saving grace, and in Tooru’s hurry to pack his things for his literature class, he leaves his phone behind, on the clubroom bench. With numb, shaky hands, Hajime picks it up to put in his own backpack, and he doesn’t mean to snoop, but the screen lights up with a new text from Sugawara. 

**I’m so glad we can talk about these things, Oikawa-san,** he writes, with a smiling emoticon, and Hajime has to press his sleeve to his mouth to stop himself from screaming. 

* * *

Now that Hajime is paying attention—now that he knows to pay attention—he can feel the crush in Tooru’s biomagnetic field. When Sana walks into their homeroom, a warmness perks up in Tooru’s frequency and—well. It’s embarrassing, Hajime’s embarrassed at himself for even noticing, but that specific mood used to be reserved for Hajime himself. He would feel it sometimes when he walked into a room and Tooru noticed him belatedly, and Tooru’s frequency picked up, and he smiled, and god, it’s unfair what that does to Hajime’s stupid heart, even though Hajime knows Tooru’s just happy to see him. Of course he is; Hajime is his best friend. 

So it stings to think that in less than a month, someone else has earned that warmth, too. A girl. Someone Tooru likes in a way he’ll never like Hajime. 

Hajime sees them at Tooru’s locker once, after lunch, and Sana is laughing at something Tooru said, the braces on her teeth making her look much younger, and with Tooru’s glasses they almost look like a couple of nerds bonding over the novel Sana is holding. Almost, if Hajime couldn’t feel the excited vibrations of Tooru’s frequency across the hallway. The last time Tooru’s frequency felt this way was when he dragged Hajime on a tour of the town’s rumored alien sighting locations, and Hajime had to give Tooru his warmup jacket, because Tooru was shaking from the cold and from excitement. Now he can admit to himself that, in the memory, Tooru looked impossibly cute, bundled up in Hajime’s jacket, which was just a little too short in the wrists but too big in the shoulders, and the way Tooru tucked his nose into the collar and his happy frequency just _thundered_ through Hajime’s heart—

It’s too much. 

It’s too much to look back at all these memories and realize, too late, what Hajime really felt. 

It’s too much to think that now Tooru will want to go on those stupid fucking tours with someone else. 

* * *

So, maybe Hajime is gay. At this point he’s too frustrated to even think about it. The only person he likes is the worst person on the planet, apparently, and that’s a whole mountain to get over by itself. He tries looking up videos when his parents are gone, like all the websites say you’re supposed to, and his body’s mildly interested, but none of the people look like Tooru, and Hajime doesn’t want them to. The worst part about all of this is that it’s not even about Tooru’s soft hair and the smooth line of his neck when he looks up at the gymnasium. It’s about other things that no one could ever replicate, like the way Tooru whines _Iwa-chan_ when he’s tired on the walk home, the way Tooru excitedly sends Hajime 23-minute-long YouTube videos about alien conspiracies and Hajime actually _watches_ them, and the indescribable feeling of happiness when Tooru’s biomagnetic field settles into something warm and contented when he’s curled up in Hajime’s bed. 

“Have you asked her out yet?” Hanamaki asks Tooru, when their bus is rumbling down the freeway toward Fukurōdani for their practice match. 

“No,” Tooru says, his eyes glued to his phone, where he’s watching a video of Bokuto Koutarou. “We’re still in the wooing stage.” He keeps watching this one of Bokuto’s spikes and then rewinding the video to watch the same twenty-second clip, again and again. Hajime doesn’t need to feel the mood of his biomagnetic field to know Tooru’s focused right now, obsessively focused, the type of focus that can spiral very quickly into insomnia and overwork. 

Hajime’s glad when Hanamaki drops the subject, falling back into his seat in front of them. Hajime’s glad, selfishly, that volleyball is still more important to Tooru than any girls. 

He leans against the back of the seat, watching Tooru watch. Tooru is chewing on the cuticle of his thumb, his eyes narrowed at the screen, and Hajime thinks that he has the right to be selfish about this. He won’t ask Tooru about his love life or give him girl advice—Tooru has other friends for that, apparently—but when Tooru is inevitably appointed captain next year, Hajime is fiercely determined to be appointed vice-captain. 

“What’s special about that spike?” he asks, trying not to look at the curve of Tooru’s eyelashes as he squints at the screen. 

Tooru hums, scrubbing the video backward again. “Watch his jump,” he says, holding the phone closer to Hajime’s side of the seat, and even though they’re not touching, Hajime can feel the distinct warmth of Tooru’s arm beside him. It makes it hard to focus on the screen. But Hajime is nothing if not determined, and he thinks he makes a very valiant effort. 

Tooru rants for a while about Bokuto, his voice low and fast in the way it goes when he’s hyperfocusing on something, Bokuto and how Akaashi has made him into an even more powerful weapon. “He understands him,” Tooru says, with intense feeling. “That’s what makes it work. Akaachan understands him, and you can see it in their plays, Iwa, you can literally see his brain working when Bokuto comes onto the court.” 

Hajime is impressed with Tooru’s intuition, of course, and a little suspicious of it as well—how many sleepless nights have led to this theory? How much has he been stalking Akaashi’s social media pages? How many of Fukurōdani’s matches has Tooru been watching lately? (And in between those nights and the nights at the lab and the nights he spends at Hajime’s, where will he have time for someone else?) 

“Is this why you’re trying to befriend all these setters?” Hajime asks, when Tooru’s finally ran out of words, the video forgotten on the seat between them. “So you can peer into their brains?” 

Tooru laughs. “That’s not why I befriended them, Iwa-chan.” 

Hajime waits for him to say why—it’s got to be some twisted, manipulative reason, knowing Tooru—but instead Tooru half-rises in his seat and leans over the seat back in front of them, saying, “Is someone eating milkbread? Mattsun, I see you, why are you hiding from me! Did you really think you could get away with that? You’re forgetting that I’m an extremely perceptive genius,” and Hajime turns off Tooru’s phone for him, before he has to see any messages from Tooru’s pretty setter friends about his love life. 

* * *

Tooru’s frequency is heavy and dejected when they lose to Fukurōdani. During the last set, he and Hajime and Yahaba all jumped at the net to block, but at the last minute Tooru flinched away from knocking into Yahaba’s shoulder and Bokuto slammed the spike right through the window of space. Their whole team could feel Tooru’s mood drop, and Hanamaki fumbled the next serve, and they never seemed to pick up afterward. 

Yahaba corners Hajime after the game, looking as intense as ever. Yahaba is a bit scary on the court, even though Hajime knows he wears button-down shirts and drinks hot tea and goes to the library on his days off. “You can tell Oikawa that he can touch me during matches,” Yahaba says, squaring his shoulders. “I can take it.” 

Hajime frowns, lowering his water bottle and wiping his mouth. He’s bone-tired, and he’s ready to sleep on the bus ride back. “Why are you telling me this?” he asks. “Tell Oikawa.” 

Yahaba hesitates for a fraction of a second. 

“What?” demands Hajime, with the beginnings of a sinking feeling. 

“I don’t want to intrude on his privacy,” says Yahaba, carefully. “You know how it is talking to Oikawa. It feels, well, sort of voyeuristic, sometimes.” 

Hajime does know, of course he knows. He can feel the anxiety in Tooru’s frequency when he’s forced to show weakness in front of someone, in public, even in front of Hajime, when Tooru is trying so valiantly to put up a facade but every emotion bleeding out of his body is betraying him. 

“You know,” says Yahaba, when Hajime doesn’t immediately respond, “because he can’t lie.” 

Hajime nearly laughs. He would, if he weren’t so exhausted, so drained from losing and from feeling Tooru’s self-esteem grind into the ground. “If you think that, you’re in for a nasty surprise,” he says, taking another quick drink. “The biomagnetism’s just made him better at lying. He lies about everything. Get used to it. And just go talk to him, he has to be able to trust you on the court or he’ll think he’s going to hurt you.”

Yahaba pauses for a moment, like he might argue, but then he just nods and walks away, stopping to talk to Coach. Hajime wipes the sweat off his face, drinking the rest of his water, trying not to wonder if Tooru would have crashed into him, if it had been Hajime next to him at the net instead of Yahaba. 

It’s wrong, but Hajime can’t help the twist in his stomach—he wants to feel it again, what it’s like to touch Tooru, to feel the raw, unfiltered rush of his emotions, bare and burning against Hajime’s skin. 

He wants to feel it again. He was too young to understand it the last time. 

Everyone is packing up and heading out to the bus, but by the time they’re nearly ready to go, Tooru has mysteriously disappeared, taking the depressing weight of his biomagnetic field with him. Apparently Hajime is just destined to be Tooru’s messenger, today, because Coach tells him “Go find Oikawa” without even looking at Hajime, and Hajime grumbles to himself about it all the way back to the locker room. 

As soon as he pushes open the door, he hears Akaashi’s voice, level and deep, too deep for a first-year. “I think you’re making a mistake, Oikawa-san.” 

Hajime freezes with his heart in his throat, pausing with the door halfway pushed open. He should either close it or go inside, but Hajime does neither, he just stands there, listening to Tooru say, “I like her. I really do. If you met her—you would understand.” 

“But that isn’t why you want to date her.” 

“It is,” says Tooru, and Hajime can feel the edges of his biomagnetic field, the frustration and the pent-up emotions and the hint of a sob wedged deep, deep in his chest. “I like her a lot. And I want—I want to be with someone I’m not afraid of hurting.” 

“That’s a terrible reason to be with someone,” says Akaashi, as level as ever, even though Hajime’s heart is beating slow with a kind of dread. They’re talking about Sana. About how much Tooru likes Sana. First Sugawara, and now Akaashi Keiji—Tooru really wants to open up about his feelings to anyone but Hajime. 

“Akaachan,” Tooru whines, but Akaashi interrupts him. 

“No, Oikawa-san, listen to me.” There’s a rustling of gym bags. “I think you need to be honest with yourself about your feelings. That’s the only thing that worked with Bokuto-san and I. If you like this girl, alright, but don’t just date her because you care too much about hurting the person you really like.” 

Hajime has no idea what they’re talking about, and this time Tooru’s response is muffled, too quiet for Hajime to make out, and he slowly lets the door drift closed again, his heartbeat pounding slowly in his fingertips. Is there _another_ girl that Tooru likes? One of the soft, pretty girls who came all this way to watch their practice match, someone so delicate Tooru is too afraid to go near her? How many layers of secrets is Tooru hiding from Hajime? 

And deeper, more painful, right beside the ache that settled permanently in Hajime’s chest three weeks ago: _why?_

* * *

It turns out that Akaashi Keiji _is_ gay. Hajime circles the gym a couple of times to clear his head before finding Tooru again, and on his way back to the locker room, he sees Akaashi through the open doors of the supply closet. Bokuto is lugging in the net, and when he gets to the closet, he drops it completely and scoops Akaashi up with the energy of a winner, and Hajime doesn’t have time to look away before he sees them kissing, Akaashi’s hands clasped reverently around Bokuto’s neck, Bokuto’s hair still wild from his game-ending spike. 

Hajime hurries out of the gym as fast as possible, throat burning from something he knows he wasn’t supposed to see, something that burrows deep into his chest like jealousy. He hates Tooru for being right about Akaashi, and he hates him even more for being wrong about Hajime. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kindly pretend like Seijoh plays Fukurodani in the anime :) i have taken a few creative liberties with the volleyball aspect of the story :)
> 
> also I'm sorry that this chapter is a bit on the shorter side! it just made sense to me thematically but next chapter things will begin to blow up a bit more.


	4. Chapter 4

Somewhere in his bitter heart, Hajime thinks that Tooru has waited for the flowers outside Aoba Johsai to bloom, has waited for the first pretty day of spring to announce that he’s going to confess. 

They’re at lunch, and Hajime is listening to Matsukawa and Hanamaki rag on Tooru about his confession plans. Tooru waves them away, and Hajime tries not to replay the conversation he overheard in the locker room, for the millionth time. For the last two weeks, the conversation’s been playing in Hajime’s mind on repeat, when he zones out in class, or when he’s trying to sleep and Tooru’s blowing up his phone with pointless texts. 

Akaashi didn’t think Sana was a good idea. The specialists probably wouldn’t think Sana is a good idea, either. Tooru isn’t supposed to touch anyone, and how’s he going to date a girl without touching her? 

Hajime tries not to think about Tooru touching her. His warm, calloused palms—the soft, fine hairs on his upper arms—the shampoo smell of his smooth hair—these are things Hajime hasn’t gotten to have since the specialists came around. And it’s not fair. It’s not  _ fair.  _

When they’re heading to the locker room after school, Tooru starts blathering on about how Sana is coming to watch his  _ amazing  _ serves during practice, and Hajime’s mouth disconnects from his brain. “Do you honestly like her?” he hears himself say. 

Tooru stops talking mid-sentence. “Iwa-chan,” he says, surprised. “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

Hajime bites his tongue, hard, cursing himself. There are a lot of things he means, none of which he wants to admit aloud. “I don’t know,” he says. “It’s just, you never like anybody. All these girls confess to you, and you never take any of them seriously.” 

“Well, they weren’t my type.” 

“The criminal record is what does it for you?” 

“No one can be as perfect as me, Iwa-chan.” 

He’s blowing Hajime off, but Hajime can feel the uneasiness hovering around his biomagnetic field. A few minutes ago there was no uneasiness, there was only excitement and anticipation and, yeah, some nerves, but Tooru is almost always a little antsy or paranoid about something. That part of his frequency is usually subtle enough that Hajime’s pretty sure he’s the only one who can pick it out. 

“And what happens if she says yes?” Hajime asks. He shouldn’t be still talking. He’s going to say something he regrets. “And, what, you start dating? What’re you going to tell the specialists? And what about, like—I mean, when are you gonna have time for a girlfriend? We’re on campus from six a.m. to nine at night every day.” 

“She’ll come to practice and watch,” Tooru says. “Sana-chan likes sports.” 

“Are you seriously that selfish, Oikawa?” 

Tooru glances quickly at him, and Hajime feels the hurt pierce through his biomagnetic field, even though Tooru just says flippantly, “Lots of people like to watch me play, Iwa-chan, I’m a national sensation.” 

“You just expect her to sit in the stands every day? Is that your idea of quality time?” Hajime  _ knows  _ he should stop running his mouth, it’s not right to take out his own bitterness on Tooru, but at the same time, what the hell? Hajime has been braced to give up his own alone time with Tooru, but is Tooru seriously planning on bringing Sana on dates to the Aoba Johsai  _ gym?  _

“Don’t pretend you know how to treat girls, Iwa-chan,” Tooru says. The hurt hasn’t faded from his biomagnetism. It’s festering together with the uneasiness into something complicated, something Hajime can’t unravel, but he knows it’s not good. 

“I know more than  _ you,  _ apparently.”

“We’ll do whatever Sana wants to do on my days off,” Tooru says, then, and that’s what Hajime’s been waiting for him to say, isn’t it? Tooru’s replacing Hajime with Sana. He bites his tongue again, saved from answering by Matsukawa opening the locker room door, but the ache is his chest sinks lower, heavier as they get changed. On their days off Tooru always spends his free time at Hajime’s, annoying him, doing his homework or watching volleyball reruns on his bed or singing obnoxiously while he showers in Hajime’s shower. 

Hajime shoves his bag into his locker and slams it shut. He doesn’t need to touch Tooru. He never needs to touch him again, he just needs—he just wants Tooru's free time. He just wants to be Tooru's free time. 

* * *

Hajime resolutely avoids looking at the stands all practice. A couple of Tooru’s fangirls are there, like always, Hajime can hear them cheering when Tooru slams serves into the other side of the court, but he doesn’t look. He jumps when Tooru tosses to him, throwing his body behind the ball, his palm burning on each impact, but it’s never enough. Hajime’s face is red from exertion, his legs screaming, and his whole body is sweating, but it’s not enough, and he can feel Tooru’s concern warring with his tangle of other emotions, and Hajime almost laughs at the irony. He’s the one who’s supposed to worry about Tooru. He’s  _ always _ the one who worries about Tooru. 

Practice is over too quickly. Tooru comes over to him when Hajime is gulping water, like he’s about to say something, but then he hesitates and Hajime lowers the water bottle, wiping his mouth, and Tooru just says, “Don’t drink so much you puke, Iwa-chan!” 

Hajime scowls, slamming the bottle back down on the bench. He waits until the rest of the team has headed to the locker room, until Coach says, “Lock up when you leave, Iwaizumi,” as he passes by. Hajime knows that he’s one of the only people Coach trusts to hang out in the gym after-hours and not overwork himself. Hajime is a dependable player. Hajime is a dependable friend. Always there when you need him. Always there to fall back on, even if he’s never anyone’s first choice. 

Hajime shoves himself up off the bench, grabbing one of the forgotten balls. He’s being unfair, he’s being  _ unfair  _ but he’s angry. He’s angry with himself. It’s not Tooru’s fault he likes a girl. Hajime should be happy for him, but he’s not, because he has these fucking  _ feelings  _ for Tooru and Tooru’s stupid  _ fucking  _ face and he’s going to slam balls over the net until all those feelings are smashed to smithereens. 

He stomps to the middle of the court, the muscles in his thighs burning, but when he stops and his footsteps echo in the silence of the gym, Hajime feels a prickling on his neck and glances up at the stands, quickly. 

Sana isn’t there. Of course she’s not there. 

Hajime flings the ball into the net. 

* * *

  
  


It takes a couple hours to wear himself out. Hajime isn’t stupid enough to overwork himself—he knows his limits, and he calls it quits when his arms start to shake, dropping down onto the bench again to drink his last water bottle slowly, staring out at the dark gym. 

He’s been here this late countless times with Tooru, every time Tooru insists that he needs to perfect a certain move. Hajime knows it’s dangerous for Tooru to practice too much, but Hajime can always feel the moment Tooru’s exhaustion teeters too close to the edge. Hajime always knows the exact moment to step in and pull Tooru off the court. 

The anger has drained away now, leaving Hajime slumping on the bench, teeth tugging at the lid of his water. He’s too entangled with Tooru’s emotions now to know what life’s like without them hovering around in the air. Is he going to be forced to have a front row seat to Tooru’s entire relationship with Sana? Is he going to be forced to feel the moment Tooru falls in love with her? 

Hajime’s not sure whether to laugh or cry at that thought—it’ll be the first time he feels what it’s like to be in love, and it’ll be Tooru’s love for somebody else. 

He allows himself another minute of wallowing, and then he drops his water bottle into his gym bag, standing up. His legs ache, but the physical pain is a good distraction. Hajime needs to get his head together. He grabs his stuff from the locker and starts off on the walk home, breathing the night air in steadily, in and out, in and out, trying to clear his mind. Alone on the road, it’s just him and his emotions. 

Hajime should realize that he has to pass Tooru’s house to reach his own. 

He doesn’t, until it’s too late. 

Once, over the winter holidays, Tooru had walked in on Hajime getting out of the shower. Hajime had jerked backward, slipping on the wet tile floor and crashing into the shower wall, hands scrabbling at nothing, and Tooru’s face and neck had gone all red and his frequency had shot upwards into something hot and embarrassed as he spluttered frantic sorrys, backing hastily out of the bathroom. Hajime was embarrassed, too, although he thought Tooru overreacted a bit—his biomagnetic field had crackled and tingled for at least an hour afterward, making it impossible for Hajime to settle down. 

It was one of Tooru’s more powerful emotions. 

Hajime is walking slowly down the road, closer and closer to Tooru’s house, when he feels that emotion again. At first, he doesn’t recognize it: the excited, nervous tingling in the air. He just frowns, thinking it’s odd that he can feel Tooru’s biomagnetic field all the way from the street. Normally he can’t feel anything until he’s at least at Tooru’s front door—

Hajime stops. 

He sees Tooru then. On the road directly in front of his house, a dark silhouette with poufy hair, climbing off a motorbike. Sana’s motorbike. 

Tooru would have had to touch her to sit behind her on the bike. 

That’s why his biomagnetism is so intense, Hajime realizes, his throat dry—he’s not sure when his throat went dry. Tooru has been touching Sana, for quite some time. And then Hajime sees Tooru touch Sana’s short hair, tucking it behind her ear, and Tooru bends down, the curve of his back graceful. 

Hajime doesn’t see the moment they kiss, but he feels it. The spark of heat shoots through the air, straight through Hajime’s body, like electricity, like electromagnetism. Hajime’s palms go hot. His neck goes hot, like someone has kissed him there, like it’s Tooru’s wet mouth on  _ him,  _ warm and steady like he’s feeding his electrical current directly down Hajime’s spine, lighting him on fire. 

The heat fades, surges, and then fades away completely as Tooru’s silhouette pulls away from Sana, leaving Hajime cold in the middle of the street, his jacket hanging uselessly from his arm. His body is still aching, something tugging at him to take a step forward, like he can melt back into the warmth of Tooru’s biomagnetic field, like if he just steps close enough, Tooru will put those electric hands on him, too. 

Hajime stops himself from taking even one step. He puts his knuckles in his mouth and bites down so hard all he can feel is the pain for one blinding, relieving moment. 

When he lowers his hand, Sana’s motorbike is roaring away down the street, and Hajime sees Tooru’s front door open, bathing him for a moment in yellow light, before Tooru steps inside and closes it. Hajime stands there on the road for a long minute, watching the door, like it will open again and Tooru will come out, carrying the sweater Hajime sometimes smuggles home, like if he waits long enough, Tooru will remember about Hajime and come get him. 

* * *

Hajime  _ knows  _ that if their roles were reversed, Tooru would refuse to come to school the next morning, and this is the number one thing that motivates him to drag himself down the street. His legs are still aching from the night before, but at least they don’t have morning practice. Hajime’ll have to see Tooru in homeroom, and Hanamaki will likely be bugging him about his date, but if Hajime puts his head down and focuses really hard, maybe he’ll finally manage to drown out Tooru’s loud obnoxious voice. 

Hajime knows that he overreacted last night. He knew it even while he was in the process of overreacting. Hajime doesn’t like crying, it makes him feel pathetic, and boys don’t cry, anyway, so he sat on his floor working on homework until he couldn’t ignore the blurring in his eyes anymore. Then he turned off the lights and went and got into bed, but he’s not sure if he slept. 

It’s just a girl, Hajime tries to tell himself, hands in his pockets as he walks past Tooru’s house without stopping. It’s early—Tooru’s probably still in the shower, and he’s a grown adult, he can walk to school by himself. The road in front of his house looks innocent and breezy, grass clippings rippling along the street in front of Hajime’s feet. It’s just a girl, and Hajime will get over it. 

Hajime has to get over it. 

He dawdles by his locker, watching the hallway for Tooru or Sana. He’s going to have to see them both in homeroom, and he’s going to have to act normal, casual, he’s going to have to watch them kiss hello, probably, he’s going to  _ feel  _ them kiss hello. And he’s going to have to hide it. Hajime clenches his jaw, slamming the locker door shut, and tells himself he can do it. (For Tooru. Except not for Tooru, because that’s stupid. Hajime is stupid.) 

He steels himself out of the classroom before pushing the door open. He steels himself to see Sana, glowing, her cheeks still pink like they must have been after Tooru kissed her.

He doesn’t steel himself to see Sana sitting in Hajime’s desk, tears running down her face, girls clustered around her. 

Hajime freezes. Sana’s mascara is smeared around her eyes, her hands balled up around tissues, and Hajime feels like the room has gone underwater around him, the walls closing in around him. His hand itches for the door handle, to back up and shut himself out of the room again, and he hates that the first thing he thinks is,  _ Did Tooru break up with her already? _ —hates that the thought comes tinged with a twisted kind of hope. 

Sana spots him and sits up, and all the thoughts fly out of Hajime’s head. He barely has time to think,  _ Shit,  _ before she cries, “Iwaizumi-kun! Iwaizumi, I need to talk to you, right now!” 

Hajime edges forward. Sana stands from his seat and he realizes, with dread, that she was waiting for him there. 

“What?” he asks, awkwardly—he’s never actually spoken to Sana before, and she’s nearly as tall as him, and even with black tear tracks on her face she looks intimidating, and what if she found out about Hajime’s stupid fucking crush on her boyfriend? What if Tooru told her about the way Hajime tried to discourage him from asking her out? Hajime’s armpits itch, hot and uncomfortable, and Sana wipes at her face and says, voice breaking, 

“There’s something wrong with—with Tooru!” 

Oh. Hajime feels the dread pull back, just a little. 

He’ll wish later that it could have stayed there. 

“Oh, yeah,” says Hajime, rubbing his neck. Goddammit, why didn’t Tooru tell Sana about his biomagnetic field himself? “Well, actually, he has this medical condition, it’s sort of—”

“No,” says Sana, louder, voice still shaking. “No, I mean something’s wrong in his head, I mean he’s fucked up, I mean, he, he, he did something to me.” 

Hajime stares. The underwater feeling submerges his head again, and for a moment all he can see is Sana, saying those words.  _ He did something to me. He did something to me. He did something to me _ , the words sinking Hajime’s stomach lower and lower, an awful thought settling in. 

What if Tooru hurt her? 

Hajime has never doubted Tooru before—not really. He knows Tooru’s a good person, behind all the arrogance and posturing, and the knowledge is set in stone in Hajime’s mind, one of the things he’s fiercely confident in, one of the things he’d defend to his death. 

But now—

_ He did something to me.  _

For the first time, for a horrifying moment, Hajime wonders if he’s going to have to re-evaluate everything he knows about Tooru. 

“What?” he hears himself say. 

“I don’t even like him!” Sana says, her voice rising, and Hajime flinches like he’s been slapped, mind reeling, because, what the fuck? What the fuck does she mean?

“What?” he repeats, stupidly. 

“I don’t like him,” Sana says, “not like that, I don’t, I never have. But then last night I—I did! Or I thought I did! I really felt like I loved him, and then I woke up this morning and I realized that—I don’t know! None of it was real, I don’t know where the feelings came from!” 

“He hypnotized her somehow,” says one of the other girls, then, her hand smoothing Sana’s hair out of her face—girls who have never been Sana’s friend before. “Or what if—Sana-chan, what if he drugged you?”

Sana covers her face, and Hajime opens his mouth and closes it, his words lost among the jumble of racing thoughts. Tooru couldn’t have drugged her—he wouldn’t have. No. It’s the biomagnetism, somehow it’s the biomagnetism, it’s always the biomagnetism, and Hajime opens his mouth again to explain, somehow he has to explain—

One of the girls gasps. Sana drops her hands and stumbles back, and Hajime doesn’t have to turn around to know that Tooru’s there. It all happens so fast. Hajime doesn’t even get to turn around before Sana’s shouting, “There! Do you feel it?” 

Hajime does, horrifyingly—it’s muted but it’s there, Tooru’s bubbling affection, flowing through the room, and one of the girls says, “Oh my god, I do,” and Sana chokes on another sob, swiping her hand across her eyes, and says, 

“It’s worse when he touches you, that’s when—that’s when I was convinced it was real, when he was touching me, the feelings, they were so—they felt so real,” 

And Hajime feels Tooru’s mood shift to ice, and he thinks, panicked, wild, that this isn’t what he meant when he hoped they would break up—this isn’t what Hajime meant. 

“Sana-san, listen,” Hajime starts, but she’s already shouting at Tooru, eyes blurring right through Hajime, 

“What is wrong with you? What the  _ fuck  _ is wrong with you?” 

Tooru is saying something, something Hajime can’t hear through the chaos in the room, several of the girls talking over each other, their homeroom teacher yelling at everyone to settle down, and Hajime finally manages to back away from it all, toward the blackboard, eyes cutting to Tooru, who’s standing shell-shocked in the classroom doorway. 

Behind him the hallway yawns, huge and empty. 

Tooru’s eyes are blown wide, his arms limp at his sides, and his biomagnetic field is like something Hajime has never felt before—almost nonexistent, blurry around the edges, numbing up with pure shock, pure horror. 

And then Hajime sees the specialists. 

They’re crowding into the space on either side of Tooru, gloved hands on his shoulders, and for a moment they’re frozen there, like bodyguards, and then the women is pushing through the doorway, crossing the classroom to where Sana is hunched over again, her face covered with her hands, the rest of the class devolving around her, the girls falling back. 

“Stand up,” says the woman, and Hajime’s mind flashes through images of blue surgical gowns, of syringes, of a cold lab table, of the medical horror films Tooru will no longer watch, as the woman takes Sana’s arm. 

When Hajime’s eyes dart back to the door, Tooru and the man are already gone. 

Panic burns through Hajime’s body, white-hot. He doesn’t know what’s happening, but he knows it’s bad, it’s very bad, and he can’t let them take Tooru back to that nameless lab again without him, Hajime can’t leave Tooru alone with them when they’re angry like this. The woman is halfway across the classroom, leading Sana, when Hajime grabs her other arm. 

“I need to come, too,” he says. “Please, I have to,” and he’s ready to fight, he’s ready to do anything, but the specialist simply nods, her eyes sharp and expressionless, her hand coming up to hold Hajime’s wrist, like a vice. 

* * *

“We believe Oikawa Tooru’s biomagnetic field may be able to influence others’ emotions,” the specialist says, “to a degree previously thought to be impossible.” 

Hajime sits frozen in the cold, waiting room chair. The lab assistant nods, writing something on a clipboard, and the specialist turns to Hajime. It’s the man. The woman took Sana to a different room as soon as they arrived. The lab doesn’t look like a lab, or even like a hospital—it looks like an abandoned office building, a small brown strip off a back road, and the waiting area is an empty conference room full of far too many folding chairs. Hajime is the only one sitting. 

“Iwaizumi,” the man says, and Hajime gives a jerky nod. The man has begun to gray at the temples, and it makes Hajime sick, how long these people have been stalking Tooru’s every move, waiting for him to make a mistake, a mistake Tooru has finally made. “Have you ever experienced this personally? You assume what you feel is your own emotion, only to part ways with Oikawa and realize it was simply one of his emotions taking over your mind?” 

“No,” says Hajime immediately. It’s not fully true. When Tooru is depressed after a loss, of course the mood on the court affects all of them, but he’s seen the same thing happen to Fukurodani when Bokuto has a particularly bad mood swing. Hajime might feel upset when he knows Tooru’s upset, but that’s because Hajime  _ cares  _ about him. Hajime knows Tooru well enough to separate his own emotions from Tooru’s biomagnetism. 

He’s never realized that other people might not be able to make the same distinction, especially not when Tooru’s touching them. It’s a terrifying thought, and it sits heavy at the base of Hajime’s throat, making it hard to swallow. 

“You don’t feel influenced by his moods?” prods the specialist. “Maybe one day you’re feeling fine, happy even, and then you meet up with Oikawa, and suddenly you don’t feel so happy anymore?” 

“Only if he’s being annoying,” Hajime says before he can stop himself, and the specialist gazes blankly at him, and Hajime quickly amends, “I mean, I can feel his mood but I’ve never gotten it confused with my  _ own  _ mood.” 

“So when Oikawa shows affection toward you,” the specialist says, “how does that make you feel?” 

Hajime’s neck heats up, and he feels acutely aware of the lab assistant, standing by the door and watching them. “I don’t know,” he says, face burning. “Normal.” 

“Has Oikawa ever shown sexual interest in you?” 

“No,” Hajime grits out. 

The lab assistant marks something else down on his clipboard, and Hajime wants to get up and leave, but he can’t, because these people have Tooru locked up somewhere in the building, somewhere where Hajime can’t feel his biomagnetic field even when he strains his senses. 

“Are you going to let me see him?” Hajime demands. 

“We are waiting for Oikawa’s parents to arrive,” the specialist says. “They can bring you back to school afterward.” 

“I want to  _ see  _ him,” Hajime repeats, louder. “You can’t hold him hostage.” 

“We are assessing his threat potential,” the specialist says, turning away again, as the lab assistant suddenly exits the room. Hajime is about to argue that Tooru isn’t dangerous, but the tightness in his throat stops him—what if Tooru  _ is  _ dangerous? Sana seemed so afraid, so hurt. All she did was sit on a motorcycle next to Tooru, and Tooru’s biomagnetism somehow convinced her that she was in love with him, when really it was just Tooru’s emotions overflowing into her own brain. 

Will the same thing happen to anyone Tooru falls in love with? Anyone he touches? Will he ever be allowed to touch anyone again? And if his own affection can affect a person’s heart so much, can Tooru ever be sure again that  _ anyone  _ really cares about him? 

Hajime holds all the questions back. He knows now that the specialists will only tell him things he doesn’t want to hear. 

The door opens again, and the lab assistant returns, and then the lump in Hajime’s throat jolts–behind the lab assistant is a guy with dark hair, his hands in his pockets, head down. 

It’s Kageyama Tobio. Hajime would recognize that terrible posture anywhere. 

It’s been nearly two years since Hajime saw Kageyama, but the pallor of his skin is the same, the way his eyelids stay peeled back from his eyes like a fish afraid to blink. Kageyama’s anxiety is as visible as Tooru’s, even without a hyperactive biomagnetic field, and he’s not as good at hiding it. 

The sight of him both exhausts and terrifies Hajime. 

“Kageyama,” Hajime says before the specialist can say anything, and Kageyama glances at him with still-wide eyes, unblinking. Hajime’s heart is beginning to beat in his throat again. The specialists would only bring Kageyama here to say bad things about Tooru. Kageyama won’t lie, Hajime knows he won’t, but Tooru—Tooru was never kind to Kageyama. 

“Come have a seat, Kageyama,” says the man, waving vaguely to the chairs by Hajime, and Kageyama crosses the room tentatively but doesn’t sit. “Sorry to call you out of school. We have a medical emergency.” 

“Oh,” says Kageyama, and then clams up again. He doesn’t ask if it’s about Tooru, but his eyes dart to Hajime again, and Hajime wants to grab him and drag him away. He just needs one minute alone with Kageyama, to explain, to ask him not to say anything incriminating. Hajime would do anything, if Kageyama would just promise to stay quiet. It’s frightening in and of itself, what Hajime would be willing to do to protect Tooru, but the fear is numb in his chest, cowering under the fear of what Kageyama will  _ say.  _

The specialist doesn’t waste any time. “Do you remember the last time we brought you here,” he asks, and “Do you remember being close with Oikawa Tooru,” and Hajime can only watch mutely, frozen, as Kageyama’s honest, stark answers steer the situation closer and closer to disaster. 

“Do you remember,” the specialist says, “feeling any pain?” 

“Uh,” says Kageyama, shuffling his feet again. “Sort of? It knocked me down, and my body hurt for the rest of the day.” 

The specialist nods. “Oikawa is no longer allowed to touch anyone,” he says, and Hajime sees the confusion on Kageyama’s face, but he nods. “But we have a different kind of pain in mind today. When Oikawa got angry with you, how did that make you feel? Did you feel angry, too?” 

Kageyama thinks for a moment. Hajime watches him helplessly. Kageyama won’t lie—which means his answer could be that much worse. 

“Yeah, I guess so,” he says, and Hajime swallows, and then, oblivious to the rising tension in the room, Kageyama adds, “I’m still angry.” 

The specialist pauses. Hajime sees him blink. “You still feel the effects?” he asks slowly. 

Kageyama shrugs, eyebrows furrowing. “I don’t know.”

“Do you feel angry often? More than before?” 

“Uh.” Kageyama shifts his weight again, looking away. “I don’t know. I guess so. I feel angry, uh...a lot. Especially when I think about him. He’s an asshole. And my teammates think I’m just like him, which pisses me off.” 

_ Oh no, _ Hajime thinks desperately,  _ oh no.  _

“My coach says that Oikawa had a big influence on me,” Kageyama says, almost a grumble, like it’s something he’s repeating reluctantly, only after hearing it a dozen times. “Like, playing with him changed me, or something.” 

Hajime can feel the cold creeping along his body, his mind a mess of  _ oh no  _ and dread, and the specialist straightens his back, emphasizing Kageyama’s slouch. 

“He changed you.” 

Kageyama shrugs again. “Yeah. I guess so. That’s what everyone says.” 

For the first time today, Hajime realizes he’s going to cry. He’s almost too numb to feel the tears, sliding wet along his bottom eyelids, the cold pain in his face. Kageyama isn’t lying, he’s telling the truth, the best truth he has, that Tooru affected him, affected his whole life, that one moment that Tooru lost control of his emotions was enough to leave permanent damage. And Hajime hears what the specialist is thinking, what hangs unspoken in the air, that Tooru is a monster, Tooru is a monster, Tooru is a monster. 

When Kageyama glances at Hajime again, he looks stricken, shock melting through his confusion, and Hajime realizes he’s crying. In front of people. Hajime hates crying, he never cries in public, but his arms feel stuck, too heavy to lift to wipe away the tears. 

As if nothing’s wrong, the specialist continues asking questions. If Kageyama is afraid of Tooru.  _ I don’t know. I guess so,  _ grudgingly. If Kageyama thinks Tooru might hurt other people.  _ Yeah, if they made him mad.  _ If Kageyama thinks Tooru is dangerous. Kageyama scrunches his face again and says, like the confused kid he is, “I mean, on the court. You don’t want to be across from one of his serves.” 

Hajime finally manages to unstick one of his arms, rubbing it roughly over his eyes. The cold has set deep in his body, and he’s not sure how to stop shaking.  _ Tooru is a monster.  _ That’s what they all think, that Tooru’s a monster. Tooru’s biomagnetic field can hurt people, his anger can damage them forever. They’re never going to allow Tooru out of their sight again, they’ll never allow him to be a normal person again, and here is Kageyama Tobio, standing here with no actual malice, reciting Tooru’s prison sentence to his specialists. 

* * *

The specialist leaves to take Kageyama to sign a NDA and Hajime makes a break for it. He’s out the door into the hallway in seconds, hurrying down the nondescript hallway. He has to find Tooru. He has to, he has to, and Hajime can’t even feel himself breathing, can’t feel the shaking of his legs, down one hallway and then a sharp left into another, the silence of the empty office roaring in his ears, his mind full of  _ find Tooru, find Tooru, find Tooru.  _ Hajime has to get to him before the specialists do. He has to, even though it makes no sense, he has no idea what he’ll do when he finds Tooru, but he  _ has  _ to, he has the pounding feeling that something terrible is about to happen. 

When Hajime feels the edges of Tooru’s biomagnetic field, his knees sag. 

Maybe the biomagnetism can do horrible things. But Hajime nearly collapses from the pure relief of feeling it. 

He searches for the door. It’s near the end of the hallway, where the carpeted floor has given away to stark linoleum, the square windows in each door covered with thick screens so Hajime can’t see inside. There’s a humming here, something electric in the walls, and Hajime knows which door is Tooru’s as soon as he touches it. The smooth plastic burns with the vibrations of Tooru’s fear, Tooru’s terror, and Hajime swallows past another wave of tears. It’s enough to make him break down, Tooru’s fear so strong Hajiime can taste it, and Hajime needs to get him out of here, far far far away, where he can soothe that fear away, where they’ll never have to face it again.

He shoves his whole weight against the door and it gives, unlocked, and Hajime goes tumbling inside. 

He catches himself just as Tooru gives a small cry—  _ “Haji—”  _ his voice breaking off before he can finish Hajime’s name, and Hajime’s composure breaks too, the hot tears returning in full force before he can swallow them back. 

“Tooru,” he says, and Tooru sits up, braced on a plastic-covered hospital chair, the only thing in the room besides the electrocardiogram monitor hooked up to his arm, its colored lines spiking with his frequency, with the rapid rise and fall of his raspy, panicked breathing. There’s a heavy X-ray mat hanging over his front and back, and Hajime’s throat tightens up, another wave of tears rolling down his face, because it’s not fucking fair, it’s not fair that they’d put something like that on his body like people need to be protected from Tooru. 

“Don’t—” Tooru starts, and Hajime freezes midstep, tightening his hands into fists. 

“What?” He’s never cried in front of Tooru. He never has, and he hates it, he fucking hates it, he hates everything. Tooru presses his heels into the hospital chair, clutching the tops of his knees. 

“If you get too close—”

“Fuck that,” Hajime snaps, his voice grating and rough, “I’ll get as close as I want.” 

Tooru gives another broken sound, and Hajime digs his nails into his palm, crossing the room, grabbing onto the edge of the hospital chair. “Move over.” 

Tooru scoots over, rubbing at his nose, his eyes bloodshot, like he’s been crying for the past two hours and there are no tears left. He drags the EKG monitor with him, and Hajime grinds his teeth and scrubs at his tears and sits where it was. The hospital chair is cold. He’s so close to Tooru that it feels like Hajime’s whole body is vibrating with his frequency, like standing too close to a fan, or flying down a rickety roller coaster, and the emotions are horrible ones, but Hajime holds onto the feeling fiercely. 

He doesn’t know yet that it’s the last of Tooru’s emotions he’ll feel for a long, long time. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah yes kageyama....our favorite local dumbass has arrived !! to make everything worse !! but on accident because he is pure !! 
> 
> please lmk if this chapter was too confusing with all the technical explanation stuff. plot is not my strong suit, unfortunately


	5. Chapter 5

**part two**

**unwept**

The meds, the specialists say, are not meant to hurt Tooru. 

The meds, the specialists say, are for Tooru’s own good, and the good of those around him. 

The meds, the specialists say, are not meant to mute Tooru’s emotions entirely, just to dull them, so they can’t be communicated through his biomagnetic field anymore. Of course it means Tooru won’t feel much, but this is just a side effect. The important thing is that no one else is affected by his emotions. The important thing is that no one gets hurt.

This is the fourth rule. Tooru is not allowed to go off the meds. 

They keep Tooru away from Hajime for three whole days. Tooru’s supposed to stay in the lab so the specialists can monitor his reaction to the medication under careful supervision. Hajime is supposed to go to school, and he goes, alright, he goes, but it’s all a blur, an angry blur, and the rage seethes through his mind during classes, while Hajime plans how to destroy that godforsaken lab, and he doesn’t eat at lunch, and Hanamaki and Matsukawa stay awkwardly silent. Hajime knows they want to ask what happened. The reality show that Hanamaki and Tooru watch comes on during the second night, and Hajime knows Hanamaki is on the brink of asking where Tooru is, all day. 

It just makes Hajime cross his arms tighter, all the anger building inside him, turning inward and burrowing deep into the crevices of his body that Tooru’s biomagnetism usually fills. Matsukawa and Hanamaki want to ask Hajime about Tooru, because Hajime is supposed to be Tooru’s keeper, his anchor, his protector, and Hajime wasn’t able to protect him this time. He had one job, and he let Tooru down. 

Sana transfers homerooms, and Hajime knows he should feel something for her, for the fucked up thing she went through, but he doesn’t have room for any emotions but fury at himself, at his own incompetence. 

(The specialists waited until Hajime and Tooru fell asleep on the hard, uncomfortable hospital bed before they swept in and removed Hajime.)

  
  


* * *

Tooru’s mom calls Hajime’s cell phone during practice on the third day. Coach watches Hajime drop his water bottle, grabbing his phone out of his bag, and even though they’re not allowed to take calls during practice, Coach just nods at Hajime. Hajime grips the phone and jogs out of the gym, trying not to break into a full-out run. Coach knows it’s an emergency. At this point anything concerning Tooru feels like an emergency. 

“Hajime,” Tooru’s mom says when he picks up. The way she says his name reminds him of warm summer afternoons catching bugs in her front yard and Hajime’s throat chokes up. He forces it down, sitting heavily on the bench in the locker room, bracing his free hand on his lap. Hajime has been doing far too much crying lately. It’s time for him to man up. 

“Is Tooru—”

“I’m bringing him home now,” she says. “I thought you’d like to be the first to know.” 

Hajime has to swallow a couple of times before he can force out, “Is he—is he okay? Can I talk to him?” 

“He’s sleeping right now, honey.” The car hums on her side of the phone, and Hajime squeezes his eyes shut. He can’t cry. He’s at practice. They’re all counting on Hajime to be the strong one, the dependable one, the resilient one. “The doctors said he would be very sleepy at first. A side effect of the medication.” 

They have a practice match this weekend. Against Shiratorizawa. Tooru can’t be sleepy for that, but Hajime doesn’t say so. 

“Can I—” He swallows again, pressing the heel of his hand into his thigh until it hurts. “Can I come over after practice? On my way home?”

“Of course,” she says. “You’re always welcome. I’ll wake Tooru up for you.” 

“You don’t have to,” Hajime says. It’s hard to breathe in the locker room, it feels like the air is short and scratchy and difficult to inhale, but Hajime is managing. “I want him to sleep it off. I just want to see him.” 

“I know,” she says, and Hajime thinks she probably knows too much. 

  
  


* * *

When Hajime lets himself into the Oikawas’ house, the foyer is dark, and as he slips his shoes off, he wonders if Tooru’s mother already went to bed or if she’s awake in the house somewhere, crying. 

Hajime wants to be upset with her for relying on the specialists, for calling them doctors, for entrusting Tooru with their shady science. But he can’t. She’s his mother, she’s doing what she thinks is best for him, and the only one Hajime can be upset with is himself, for failing Tooru. 

He takes the stairs two at a time, and he knows something’s wrong as soon as he reaches the top. 

Hajime feels nothing. No Tooru. 

He almost turns around and goes back down the stairs, but then he thinks of the meds. Hajime’s not supposed to be able to feel the biomagnetism from here. He needs to be closer to Tooru, maybe even right next to him, before he’ll feel the emotions. Hajime tries Tooru’s bedroom door, and it’s unlocked. 

“Oikawa?” he whispers into the dark room, closing the door softly behind him. 

The blankets on Tooru’s bed rustle, and then the bedside lamp is turning on, bathing Tooru in yellow light. Tooru’s hair is frizzy around his face, and his t-shirt is twisted around his body, and Hajime swallows and what tumbles out is, 

“I’m sorry.” 

Tooru blinks at him, slowly. Then he gives a soft laugh, raising one limp hand to wave it away. “Iwa-chan,” he says. “What are you talking about?”

Hajime doesn’t even have anger left to be mad at Tooru for being fake at a time like this. It’s alright, anyway, because as soon as Hajime gets close enough, he’ll be able to read Tooru’s biomagnetic field, even if it’s faint, and Hajime will see past all the falsity. “Are you okay?” he asks, instead of the apologies he doesn’t know how to say: for letting Tooru ask Sana out, for letting Kageyama talk to the specialists, for not getting Tooru out of the lab fast enough. 

“Of course I’m okay,” says Tooru. He sags back against the pillows, yawning. “I look hideous, though. Iwa-chan, don’t look at me. I was stuck in that bland office building for three days, they didn’t even have a shower there. I went _three days_ without showering, Iwa, I felt like I had switched bodies with _you._ ” 

Hajime scowls in spite of himself. “I’m clean, dumbass. I shower every day after practice, you see me.”

“You wash your hair with _hand_ soap, Iwa-chan.” 

Hajime shouldn’t feel this kind of relief. Tooru should probably be crying right now, but they both cried enough in that fucking lab room, and maybe this is what Tooru needs, right now–for things to be normal. Hajime sheds his sweatshirt, laying it across the back of Tooru’s desk chair, and asks, “Can I come–” and gestures to the bed.

Tooru’s eyes widen, but he nods. Carefully, he props himself up and moves to the far side of the bed, leaving enough room for Hajime to lie next to him without touching. Hajime realizes he’s aching, deep in his chest, to feel Tooru’s emotions again—it’s been so many days and he misses it, the constant hum of Tooru’s frequency around him, fitting into all Hajime’s empty gaps. The biomagnetism can do bad things, maybe, but the warm happiness when Tooru is lying content next to Hajime is the most beautiful thing Hajime’s ever felt, like he’s finally at peace, fully and completely. 

But when Hajime slides under the blankets next to Tooru, his senses keep grasping at nothing, the air around them still and silent and empty. It’s a bit like coming up for air and finding no oxygen. Hajime hesitates and then reaches across the cramped bed, placing his hand on the mattress right next to Tooru’s chest, near his heart, where the field is supposed to be the strongest.

There’s still nothing. No hum. No tingle. 

Hajime tries to swallow, but there’s no oxygen. 

“How do you—how you feel?” he whispers, awkwardly, into the emptiness. He’s never had to ask before. 

Tooru _hmm_ s quietly. “I feel alright, Iwa-chan,” he says. “Just tired.” There’s a small pause. “How do _you_ feel? Did you miss me?” 

Tooru’s just being his normal cocky self, or pretending to be, but Hajime feels off-kilter, scattered and lost without the normal comfort of all Tooru’s emotions in the air. Even though he’s right next to Tooru, Hajime feels like he’s alone. 

“We missed you at practice,” he says, because he doesn’t know how to say _yes,_ that one simple word. 

“Did Kyoutani bite anyone’s head off?” 

“Yahaba kept him under control.”

“Mmm. Good. We can always rely on Yaba-chan.” Maybe it’s the lack of biomagnetism, but even though Tooru’s saying the words, his voice sounds tired, deeply tired, the kind of exhaustion that means apathy. It’s too dark for Hajime to see his eyes. Hajime feels desperately out of depth, like he doesn’t know Tooru at all, like they’re strangers, and it bites deeper than anything else. 

He knew the specialists might hurt Tooru. He never thought they would take him _away._

“Will you stay?” Tooru whispers, a long time later–Hajime doesn’t know how long later. Hajime’s been lying on his side drifting from numb shock to bone-crushing, exhausting depression. He nods, taking a moment to rouse his heavy limbs, twisting to turn off the bedside lamp. Then Tooru’s breathing fades to slow silence, his inhales barely a sound in the night, and Hajime tries to stay away to cling onto that barest sound, the only piece of Tooru he has left. 

* * *

“Oh my god,” says Hanamaki, the next morning at morning warmups. “Did they fix you?” 

Matsukawa elbows him, leaning across the mat to stretch his hamstrings. “Don’t call it that,” he chides, and Hanamaki elbows him back. 

“I just meant I don’t feel anything anymore,” he says. “Oikawa knows what I meant, he’s not a baby. Did they get rid of your electromagnetic field?”

“Biomagnetic,” says Matsukawa. 

Tooru smiles, the same wide smile he always gives them, smoothing his perfect hair away from his face as he sits down. Gone is the frizziness from last night, the raspy voice, but Hajime still feels nothing when he sits by Tooru. The air is empty of feedback. It’s beginning to make Hajime feel like he might lose his mind, like everyone’s talking too quietly around him, like his hearing is fading but no one will speak up.

“The specialists got rid of it,” Tooru says brightly. The emotion falls flat—he’s not even smiling with his eyes—but Tooru is always the most confident in his own performance, until everyone else starts to believe it, too. “No more feeding off my emotions, Makki. You’ll have to come up with your own personality now.” 

“They didn’t get rid of it,” says Hajime. “They just put you on a shit ton of sedatives.” 

Tooru gasps, swatting at him. “Don’t disclose my personal medical history, Iwa-chan!” 

Hajime scowls at him, grabbing a crumpled water bottle from the night before out of his bag and chucking it at his shoulder. Tooru gives a short yelp, but it’s almost too late, like he forgot to react in time, like he’s lagging behind. Hajime clenches his jaw. 

It’s not right. None of this is right. 

“They’re not sedatives, anyway,” says Tooru. “The specialists can’t interfere with my volleyball, I wouldn’t allow it.” 

Hajime thinks derisively that Tooru hasn’t had much of a say, so far, in what the specialists do with him. But he doesn’t say it. 

“They’re just mood stabilizers,” says Tooru, “and anti-mania, I think they said? They need to put Bokuto on some of this stuff, it might help him not to go absolutely batshit on the court.” 

“Wait,” says Hanamaki, glancing at Hajime, “how does that help with the biomagnetism? I mean, you’re not manic, right? The bipolar thing was just, like, a rumor.” 

Hajime nods. He doesn’t have anything to add; Hanamaki is right. Tooru doesn’t have a mood disorder, nothing that needs regulation or stabilizing or calming down. He has a normal amount of emotions, which means the meds are dialing them back too far. Way too far. 

If Hajime can’t feel anything, even with his hands right next to Tooru’s heart, can Tooru himself even feel anything? 

“The quieter my emotions are, the smaller the biomagnetic field, Makki,” says Tooru. “It’s kind of like when we have practice without Iwa-chan and suddenly there’s some peace in the gym, you know?”

“That analogy doesn’t even make sense, Shittykawa,” Hajime snaps. “And what do you mean, _quieter?_ What the fuck does that even mean?” 

“It’s a word, Iwa,” says Tooru. “I know you have a limited vocabulary, but…”

Hajime is going to strangle him. “Are you just, like, emotionless now?” 

He knows he shouldn’t say it. Especially not in such a harsh voice, such a loud voice, like he’s angry—but he _is_ angry. The past week has been absolute hell, and Hajime has been thrown around between every worst mood like a ricochet with no time to catch his breath. It’s selfish, Tooru’s the one being put on fucking sedatives to medically dull all his emotions, but a week ago Hajime’s biggest worry was Tooru getting a girlfriend and now he’s stuck with a lifeless shell of Tooru, with no idea how long Tooru will be on the meds. 

Tooru doesn’t look at him when he answers. “So rude, Iwa-chan.” He starts to do his stretches, leaning forward so his hair falls in front of his face. “You don’t just ask people if they have emotions, it’s not polite.” 

Hajime wants to rip out all his perfect hair. That’s the point, he wants to snap. He doesn’t _want_ to have to ask. 

* * *

Practice that week is stilted and awkward. Everyone was thrown off when Tooru wasn’t at practice, but it’s even stranger now that he’s here but his biomagnetic field isn’t. Matsukawa keeps fumbling the ball, and Hajime feels clumsy, especially when he’s in front of Tooru on the court. Before, Hajime could always feel where Tooru was, even if Tooru was behind him, and the sensation was grounding. Now, even though Tooru serves the same, he seems slower somehow, pausing to take more breaths than before, waiting a beat too long to respond to people, like he has to search his brain for the correct emotional reaction. 

Hajime can’t concentrate. He can’t think about anything. His emotions have been sucked dry along with Tooru’s, and without the biomagnetic field, it’s just Hajime and his anger. The world isn’t over, but it feels like all these small worlds they’ve built together have been muted. 

“You know,” says Hanamaki, after Shiratorizawa has crushed them in their Saturday practice match, “I thought I would be, like, glad when Tooru got his magnetic field fixed. Like I thought it would be nice to walk into the gym and not immediately feel him fretting over a bad hair day or whatever, but I don’t like it. It feels weird.” 

“I know,” says Hajime, watching Shiratorizawa’s huddle break up. Even after a win, Ushijima is stoic and apathetic, like if Hajime could feel his heart’s biomagnetic field, it would be as still and quiet as Tooru’s is now. 

It makes him restless and unsettled. Because that can’t be true—behind that blank expression, there must be a world of emotions, a complex myriad of feelings and longings and heartaches, and Hajime will never know them. He’s terrible at reading other people, and what if Tooru’s biomagnetic field was the only thing that allowed Hajime to truly know him? What if without it, Tooru’s as distant as Ushijima or Akaashi? What if Hajime isn’t special at all—what if he doesn’t know Tooru as well as he thought he did? Will he become just another face in the crowd for Tooru now? 

“And it’s way harder to communicate on the court now,” Hanamaki adds. “I sort of always thought of Tooru as our special weapon, you know?”

Hajime nods, uncapping his water bottle, but he doesn’t respond. He knows Hanamaki doesn’t mean anything by it, but Hajime doesn’t like the word _weapon._

* * *

They don’t lose any more practice matches. 

As soon as the initial drowsiness that comes with the meds wears off, Tooru bounces back twice as hard. He starts shouting on the court more often, gathering the team up for strategy discussions, plowing forward with a new form of communication now that he can’t use his old one. He still teases Hajime and their other teammates, and his fan club continues to frequent their practice, and when they play Fukurodani, Hajime can see Tooru sitting next to Akaashi on the bench, his hands moving around in the air as they talk about setter things. 

Hanamaki and Matsukawa relax, and so does the rest of the team, for the most part, except Yahaba, who still seems just as skeptical of Tooru as always. Without the biomagnetic field, it’s mostly okay to touch Tooru on the court, and knocking into him no longer feels like anything. 

Hajime tries to avoid it, now. He doesn’t want to feel the nothingness.

Everyone else might be fooled by Tooru’s flashy smiles and renewed volleyball vigor, but Hajime suspects that something very different is going on. He stays behind almost every night to keep an eye on Tooru while Tooru sprints through the same exercises over and over again, spiking so many balls that the slamming sound makes Hajime’s head hurt, practicing until his breathing goes ragged and weak, like reeds whistling in the wind, and then he _keeps_ practicing until Hajime forces him home. Tooru is always quiet on those walks home, as if he’s still trying to catch his breath. 

Hajime knows what’s happening, and it makes him sick. With everything else numbed up in his brain, Tooru has thrown himself headfirst into the one thing that’s always been able to make him feel something: volleyball. 

It’s not working. 

Hajime knows it’s not working because when he sits by Tooru in his bed to do math homework, he feels nothing, and Tooru lets the mask slip and Hajime can see the exhaustion on his face, the apathy. Tooru can’t feel anything anymore so instead he puts all his energy into his work, into volleyball, and even their conversations begin to suffer. 

Tooru no longer watches alien movies, or the reality show about falling in love. 

* * *

It’s Tooru’s mother who gives Hajime his first glimmer of hope. 

He’s been powering through the week by scowling at everyone, including Tooru, although Tooru doesn’t pay him any mind—he keeps talking at Hajime about their new strategies against Karasuno no matter how much Hajime glowers. It’s just that nothing makes Hajime particularly _joyful_ this semester. Even Matsukawa has broken up with his girlfriend, with a vague excuse that it didn’t feel right anymore, and Hajime agrees with him even though he knows nothing about the girl. Nothing feels right anymore. 

“Do you think Tooru still feels things?” Hajime asks, when Tooru is showering upstairs and Hajime has hung back to help his mother do the dishes. It’s the question he can’t quite figure out how to ask Tooru, not in a way that will warrant a serious answer. Tooru doesn’t have to tell Hajime things anymore. 

Tooru’s mother gives a small sigh. “You know the doctors told me I’m still not supposed to touch him,” she says. “They don’t want the kind of ‘long-term repercussions’ it might have. But I can’t help myself anyway. Sometimes I just give him these long hugs before I go to bed, and I imagine that maybe it makes him feel happy, somehow.” 

Hajime stares down at the dish in his hand, rubbing the stupid Star Wars dishtowel over it. It hurts, the way she says _I imagine,_ the way none of them can be sure that Tooru is even still capable of feeling happiness. “I don’t do anything like that,” he says, feeling stupid. “I mean, I don’t do anything to try to make him happy.” 

“Just being here is enough, Haji,” she says softly. “Remember when you two were little, how much Tooru would cry whenever you had to go home? You _are_ his happiness.” 

Hajime’s eyes blur and he has to close them and count to three before the well of tears recedes. “I’ve been mean to him lately.” He can’t really remember a time when he hasn’t been kind of mean to Tooru, but normally Tooru deserves it, he acts out just to get Hajime to snap at him, it feels like. This doped-up Tooru doesn’t deserve any of it. 

“You boys are young,” she says. “You have a short temper, it’s natural, but you’ll grow out of it. You’ll calm down. It’s natural to have a lot of emotions right now, that’s what...that’s what the doctors don’t understand about Tooru.” She takes a breath, dips a mug under the stream of water. It used to be Tooru’s favorite mug, a stupid green alien mug that says _a li’l spacey_. Hajime found it at a secondhand store one Christmas. Tooru hasn’t used it in a while, but Hajime keeps catching his mother drinking tea out of it, holding it to her chest like it can bring back the innocence of their childhood, before the biomagnetism. 

She hands him the mug to dry and then says, “You know, he was falling in love for the first time, that’s a lot of emotions for one person. You lose control a little bit, when you fall in love, and maybe you make mistakes, maybe you hurt somebody. But he’ll get better control of them when he gets older. Things will get easier, and they can wean him off the medication, little by little. It’s not permanent, Haji. We’ll get our Tooru back.” 

Hajime’s eyes blur again, and his hands nearly fumble the mug, and his breath catches painfully—if he shatters Tooru’s favorite mug—but he doesn’t, and he holds it to his own chest for a second, just until he can get his own emotions under control. 

When he sets it down, shaky, he clears his throat and asks, stilted, “Can I—I mean, can I hug you, too?”

She looks at him, eyes glistening. “Of course, baby.” She puts her arms under his, clasping them around his back, and she’s short enough that Hajime can rest his cheek on the top of her head, breathing in through his tight, painful throat. He didn’t realize how tall he’s gotten, and Tooru’s even taller, he’s not her little boy anymore, but he’s still her Tooru, their Tooru. 

_It’s not permanent._

  
  
A small pinprick of light appears at the end of the Hajime’s long, dark tunnel.

* * *

When he goes upstairs, Tooru has come out of the shower, sitting on his bed in fuzzy pajamas pants and no shirt. He’s dry, his curly hair freshly diffused and fluffy, but the dip of his collarbones and the smooth solidness of his chest makes Hajime’s stomach hurt. Tooru is truly too beautiful for the world; even the slope of his shoulders as he slouches in bed looks intentional, a perfect line carved through the air. His eyebrows are unbrushed and his undereye circles are dark, but Hajime wants to kiss them. He swallows. 

“You’re all bruised,” he says, and Tooru glances up, his eyes unfocused. Hajime picks up Tooru’s glasses from the dresser and heads over to the bed, sitting down and feeling the mattress sag. It’s warm in the room, but Tooru is pale, dark bruises all over his arms and torso. “Are those from volleyball?” Hajime asks, looking at the bruises. “Or—or the lab?” 

Tooru holds out one of his arms to inspect it. “Neither, I don’t think. I just bruise easily on the meds,” he says, and then clicks his tongue. “Don’t point out my imperfections, Iwa-chan, or I’ll have to start documenting all of yours, and we both know that will take hours.” 

Hajime rolls his eyes. “Here, put on your glasses, dumbass, you’re going to hurt your eyes.” 

Tooru takes the glasses when Hajime holds them out, but then he doesn’t put them on, he just turns them over and over in his hands. All day at practice he was alive, running around the court with inhuman strength and energy, talking at Kyoutani for an hour and a half about how to get his spikes right, staying after until he wore every one of his limbs to the bone. But now that they’re home Tooru seems unfocused, a quiet confusion about him, like he can’t figure out how they got here. 

Hajime wants to touch the bruises, dark spots of green and yellow and black scattered across Tooru’s perfect skin like space debris; he wants to press on them and make Tooru hiss; he wants to make Tooru _feel_ something. Hajime aches, and the way Tooru’s hair slips over his forehead, soft and lovely, reminds of the day they sat in the club room and Hajime realized how pretty Tooru was, realized for the first time how badly Hajime wanted to be with him. It wasn’t so long ago, but it feels like a lifetime has passed. 

“Can I ask you something?” Hajime asks carefully. 

Tooru makes a small noise in the back of his throat, setting the glasses down on his thigh. “Is it something rude and invasive again? I’m not talking to you about my ugly skin anymore.” 

“You’re not ugly,” says Hajime before he can stop himself. 

Tooru makes a face at him. “I’m hideous, Iwa-chan, you said so yourself. I look like a lab rat.” 

“You’re _not—_ that,” says Hajime. His stomach twists again for an entirely different reason. Tooru’s beautiful but he’s also in pain—Hajime doesn’t _want_ him to be in pain. “And you look just fine. Do you think all those girls come to practice to see Mad Dog?” 

The corner of Tooru’s mouth lifts, and then he actually chuckles, the first time Hajiime has heard him laugh since he went on the meds. It’s enough to make his stomach untwist, a bit, it’s worth admitting that Tooru has fans because he’s attractive. “I don’t know,” he says. “The serial killer look _is_ coming back in style. Even Mad Dog has a chance.” 

“You’re so nasty when no one can hear you.” 

“I’m always nasty, Iwa-chan.” Tooru pulls his knees up, sticking his glasses on his face. It’s not like him to admit that, even if he says it in the same flippant tone he says things like, _“I’m an extremely perceptive genius,”_ and _“I mean look at me, I’m obviously model material.”_ But Hajime’s heart is weak and Tooru’s glasses make his eyes bigger, his eyelashes curling against the lenses, and so he lets it go. “Girls like me anyway.” 

Surprisingly, Hajime doesn’t feel threatened now, when Tooru talks about all the girls. Maybe it’s because he seems so detached from them, from their feelings. Hajime reminds himself that Tooru’s detached from everything now, except volleyball, and it has nothing to do with the way Tooru tucks his socked toes under Hajime’s thighs. It’s the first time they’ve touched off the court since—well. Hajime can’t remember the last time they touched off the court, and even though there’s no biomagnetism, he still feels a bit warm where Tooru’s fuzzy socks press dents into his sweatpants. 

“I wanted to ask you something,” Hajime reminds Tooru, and Tooru makes an affirming noise, watching his own socks, and Hajime clears his throat. “What did you like about—about Sana? I’ve never seen you like a girl that much before.” 

Tooru lifted his eyes up, his chin still tucked into his knees. “She reminded me of you,” he says. 

The simple honesty burns through any guards Hajime still has up, and he gapes at Tooru with his mouth open until he remembers to close it. “What?” he manages, his mind racing to put the pieces together. Sana’s short, dark hair—the way he’d hear her say “fuck” aloud to herself sometimes—the permanent wrinkle between her eyebrows, her intimidating face—Hajime feels his body flush with a sudden, intense heat. Tooru can’t mean it _that_ way, but still, he found a girl who reminded him of Hajime and he sat hugging her on a motorcycle and he kissed her and when he did, Hajime felt the emotions explode behind his eyes and—and—

“You know,” says Tooru, a bit dully, like he’s unaware of Hajime’s world spontaneously combusting, “she even kind of looked like you. I don’t know. I guess it felt familiar. And she seemed like somebody who could handle me, somehow, kind of badass with the criminal record and everything. She seemed like someone who wouldn’t fall apart if I touched her.” 

Tooru doesn’t have to say that he was wrong. Hajime hears it in his voice, his dead-tired voice, and some of the heat in his chest dissipates. Still, he can’t shake off the overwhelming knowledge that Tooru almost thought of _him_ that way—so close but so, so far. 

“What was the criminal record for?” 

“There was no criminal record,” Tooru says. “That was just a rumor. Sana’s parents moved her away from Tokyo because she had a boyfriend there who hit her.”

Hajime goes quiet, the heat fading even more. He has nothing to say to that. It’s more horrible than anything he can imagine, and pity for Sana wells up in his chest. She’s been through hell and back, too, a different hell than he and Tooru, but hell nonetheless. 

It’s a while later before Tooru speaks again. “I went and apologized to her, y’know. I wrote her a letter and everything, like I did when I confessed, I explained everything the specialists told her. I told her I was sorry, but I don’t think she believed me.” He rubs a thumb along the side of his fuzzy pajamas, the ones with Yoda on them. “I _am_ sorry. God. I’m so sorry.” 

But he says it like he’s reciting something he knows is true, something he knows the old Tooru would feel. 

Hajime wants to ask if Tooru wishes it had worked out with Sana; if he still likes her. But he thinks it would be too cruel. Tooru doesn’t seem like he can like anyone anymore, and even if he did he couldn’t be with them, he’s barely allowed to hug his own mother. It makes Hajime want to bundle him up tightly in the blankets and hold him for hours, kissing his face in bed all throughout the cold night, until he’s made up for the months and months Tooru’s had to go without touch, until the feeling of another person’s warm skin bleeds back into Tooru’s heart. For a moment, an illogical, desperate part of Hajime feels like he could break through the medication, if he just loved Tooru enough. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mad dog is beautiful to ME >.<
> 
> yall!! im so sorry for the late update, my computer totally went on the fritz this weekend and i ended up having to buy a new one, which was a whole situation. the next chapter should be up this weekend as usual. part two is the saddest, but i also think it was the most beautiful to write. hope yall enjoy a little bit of angst bc that's what i'll be giving out for the next couple chapters :)


	6. Chapter 6

Hajime thinks a lot about what Tooru’s mother said as the semester draws to an end. His responsibility to protect Tooru, to be his anchor, to be dependable—it didn’t end when Hajime failed to break Tooru out of the lab. Hajime still needs to try to make Tooru happy, even if Tooru can’t feel much—that’s his role in their friendship, and he cares fiercely about it. He’s been selfish the past couple of months, stuck in a rut of his own anger, pissed off at the world. That doesn’t do either of them any good. If they’re going to get through this—if it really is temporary—they have to make the best of it. 

So he starts buying Tooru milkbread on the down-low and hiding it in his room, pretending it’s from his mother. He starts following these science-fiction blogs on social media so he can send Tooru interesting posts. And he starts refusing to let Tooru go to the gym on Sunday morning. “We practiced all week,” he says. “If you don’t take a day off, I’m going to tell Coach.” 

“You’re a snitch, Iwa-chan,” says Tooru, frowning that familiar pout of his. “When did you become so uptight?”

“I’m not going to be your enabler,” Hajime snaps. It’s for Tooru’s own good, and this is one of the only ways Hajime knows how to show affection for him, even though Tooru doesn’t need to know that. “You’re going to get injured, asshole. Go hang out with your friends or something. It’s the weekend.” 

Tooru continues to sulk, sitting haphazardly in Hajime’s desk chair and periodically raising his voice to whine that he needs to practice, and the next Sunday he texts Hajime again,  **come practice w/ me?**

**No,** Hajiime texts back. Practicing is all Tooru does, it’s not healthy.  **It’s your day off.**

Tooru doesn’t respond for a few minutes, and Hajime is about to send another threatening text about tattling on him to Coach, but then Tooru sends,  **fine, i’m going to get brunch with my friends. but you’re not invited, Iwa-chan. it’s for pretty people only (▰˘v˘▰)**

Hajime texts him a middle finger and goes back to studying. When he checks his phone a couple of hours later, Tooru has sent him another picture, this one of Akaashi halfway through taking a bite of waffle. Hajime snorts in spite of himself. 

**Don’t take pictures of people without their consent, dipshit.**

Tooru texts back immediately.  **akaachan looks good in it though!! even though he’s eating. isn’t that unfair, Iwa-chan? no one should look that good eating**

Hajime thinks about Akaashi and Bokuto and wonders if they’re still dating. Probably, if Bokuto’s high spirits in every match lately is anything to go by. It still makes Hajime’s stomach twist, a little, that other people get to be that happy, all the time. He’s not sure he’s  _ ever  _ been as happy as Bokuto seems to be, in his high moods. Tooru would say that’s just all Bokuto’s manic energy. Tooru is great at analyzing their opponents, even if he’s only doing it for manipulative reasons. 

Hajime sighs, putting the phone facedown back on his desk. It’s useless to get jealous of Akaashi and Bokuto—it’s not like Hajime can ever have what they have, no matter how much he thinks about it. He should just be grateful that the specialists have allowed Tooru to continue living here, instead of shipping him off to a bigger, scarier lab somewhere else. 

* * *

Tooru calls his friends “the pretty setter squad” and Hajime calls them his henchmen because he’s not sure, even now, how Tooru went out and made friends with random setters from other teams. It’s not like Tooru has a good personality, and he’s never particularly friendly with their opponents—he’d rather crush their self-esteem before chumming up over brunch. And Hajime can’t figure out what Tooru and Akaashi and Sugawara have in common. Akaashi is so deadpan that Hajime always feels distinctly that he’s looking down on everyone, and Sugawara looks like somebody who causes problems on purpose. 

But Hajime is relieved every time he sees Tooru texting them or hanging back after a practice match to look at filtered Instagram pictures on their phones. It gives him a sliver of hope that he tries very hard not to squash. It’s good to see Tooru interacting with people for a reason that isn’t “Win Volleyball.” It makes Hajime think that maybe things can be okay, again, if the specialists will just ease up on the meds a little, if they’ll just allow Tooru to feel again. 

One day Hajime actually gets to see Tooru take the meds. They’re at an overnight tournament, and everyone is sitting on their futons right before lights-out and Tooru takes a long, plastic case out of his bag. Hajime watches him open one of the little sections and pour pills into his palm. There are so many. There are too many. Hajime rubs his hands on his pajama bottoms, to try to get rid of the sudden cold sweat. 

“What are you on, anyway?” asks Hanamaki, toweling off his hair as he comes over to his futon, and Tooru rattles off a list of medical names Hajime doesn’t recognize. It must not mean much to Hanamaki, either, because he just frowns. “Is that stuff, like, addictive?” 

“Yes,” says Tooru. “Very. But it doesn’t matter, because they’re never going to take me off it.” 

Hajime rubs his hands harder. 

“Why, you want to buy some?” Tooru waves the case at Hanamaki. “Do you think I’m going to become your drug dealer, Makki?” 

“No way,” says Hanamaki. “Doesn’t it make you super tired? I already have enough trouble staying awake all day during class.” 

“Same,” says Matsukawa, yawning as he pulls his blanket over himself. 

“Well, they also kill your sex drive,” Tooru says, and Hajime nearly chokes on nothing. 

“That sucks,” says Hanamaki. “Like, you can’t get it up anymore?” 

Tooru shrugs. “I just don’t want to.” 

“Man, that sucks. Man. I wouldn’t even feel like a  _ man  _ anymore.” 

“And you used to say Iwaizumi had erectile dysfunction,” says Matsukawa, and Tooru gives an offended sort of yelp, throwing the pill case at Matsukawa’s head. Hajime feels like his face is going to burn up, thinking about Tooru feeling turned on, thinking about him sliding a hand down his sleep shorts, staring up at the sticker stars on his ceiling—and, okay, nope, he’s not going to think about this right now, or he’s going to have the  _ opposite  _ of erectile dysfunction. 

“Go to bed, Shittykawa,” Hajime says, stalking over to the light switch. “This isn’t a slumber party. We didn’t ask to hear your deep dark secrets.” 

“You’re such a  _ bully,  _ Iwa-chan,” Tooru’s voice whines, a blip in the darkness, and Hajime keeps his hand on the light switch for a minute longer, just to gather himself together. 

* * *

Final exams are grueling, and Hajime feels too exhausted to do anything but cram and study and take his exams and then sleep, immediately, each night. Tooru seems to be doing the same thing, and they barely text anymore, and when Hajime emerges from a twenty-hour nap at the end of exams, he flips his phone over and realizes he misses Tooru. 

It’s not just the past two weeks. Something twists in Hajime’s stomach, dark and cold. He’s been missing Tooru for months now. 

But if Hajime allows himself to spiral down that train of thought— _ again— _ he’ll never get out of bed. It’s already seven p.m., he can’t sleep anymore. So he opens Tooru’s contact on his phone and texts first. 

**Wanna get something to eat?**

Tooru’s response takes a few minutes, and Hajime switches to the Instagram account he’s created, not to post anything himself, just to stalk Tooru and his friends. It’s a secret account. Tooru can never know. Akaashi has posted new pictures of some romantic-ass date that he and Bokuto went on, captured in a series of aesthetic photos: sunflowers in a garden, a white picnic blanket, their faces lying together in the grass, laughing in the sun. The cold thing in Hajime’s stomach solidifies. He knows nobody’s life can be so perfect in reality (he’s  _ met  _ Bokuto, after all) but he still feels the same painful, almost angry jealous toward Akaashi, who Tooru once called a  _ prettier Hajime.  _

Tooru’s text pops up at the top of his screen.  **i’m @ the gym**

Hajime grits his teeth and swipes away from Akaashi and Bokuto’s picturesque life.  **I’m meeting you outside in ten.**

Just before he jobs out the door, Hajime remembers to grab his extra warmup jacket. Even though it’s early summer, it still gets chilly outside at night, and Tooru forgets. 

* * *

“You have to stop overworking yourself,” Hajime says, after he has to go inside the gym and start chucking volleyballs at Tooru’s head to get him to come outside. Tooru looks worn out and sweaty, whining about how he needs to shower (“I smell like  _ you,  _ Iwa-chan, or some other kind of primate”). Hajime knows he sounds too much like a mother hen, so he adds crossly, “Idiotkawa.” 

“I’m not  _ over _ working,” Tooru says. “I’m just  _ working _ . I have to master this serve.” 

“You don’t have to master anything, idiot,” says Hajime. “It’s summertime. Give it a break.” 

“Champions don’t take breaks, Iwa-chan.” 

“You realize you sound like a complete tool, right?” 

Tooru huffs, trying to fluff up his sweaty hair with his fingertips. “Where are we going?” 

Hajime stalls, leading him across a crosswalk. The series of images from Akaashi’s carefully filtered life keep replaying in his mind like a vintage film reel. He takes a few minutes of walking quietly along the sidewalk, over a cobblestone bridge, before he can put his pride to the side enough to say, “We’re going alien watching.” 

“What?” asks Tooru, sounding almost surprised—the closest thing to a genuine emotion Hajime has heard in weeks. He clenches his teeth. 

“We’re going to get convenience store snacks and then go back to that alien sighting field and see if we see any,” says Hajime. “Remember when you made me go on that stupid fucking alien tour?” 

Tooru just stares at him, his stupid eyelashes curling upward, his mouth parting like he’s going to say something (like he’s going to kiss Hajiime) (soft and wet and with a whimpered  _ ah  _ that will break right through the paralysis around his heart), but he doesn’t say anything, and Hajime feels his cheeks itch, hot. 

“What,” Hajime bites off, “do you not want to?”

“No,” says Tooru quickly, “no, I want to! Buy me convenience store food, Iwa-chan.” 

Hajime pressed his mouth together against his retort— _ buy your own food, Shittykawa— _ and hates himself for wanting to buy Tooru everything in the world. But he does want. He wants to do everything for Tooru, anything that can bring back that happiness, the indescribable feeling of Tooru’s joy radiating through the air, warming up Hajime’s whole body. 

He buys Tooru whatever he wants at the convenience store. It’s pointless, because Tooru sneaks off and buys things he knows Hajime will want, and they end up looking like idiots outside on the sidewalk, trading bags. 

“Maybe the aliens will take me back with them,” Tooru says conversationally, when they’re walking along the back road that leads to the alien sighting field. Some old guy swears he saw a crop circle out here, but Hajime heavily suspects it was just early-onset dementia. 

“What d’you mean, take you  _ back _ ?” 

Tooru shrugs, lifting his chin to gaze up at the darkening clouds above where the sun has set. Hajime hates Tooru for growing taller and he hates him for looking so graceful while doing it—Tooru’s nose is a delicate sloping line against the sky, and his jaw is sculpted and perfect. It’s not fair.

“I think I must have come from somewhere up there, don’t you?” Tooru says. “At the lab they sometimes say things like—that I’m inhuman.”

The anger in Hajime’s chest threatens to rise up again, and he has to clench his hands deep in his jacket pockets. He wants to stomp inside that makeshift lab and punch holes in all the walls—he wants to take an iron bar and knock them all down, crack a few ribs, step on their faces until they forget Tooru’s name.  _ Inhuman.  _ What they mean is  _ less than human.  _ Hajime wants to spit obscenities about the specialists, he wants to grab Tooru around his perfect shoulders and kiss him fiercely until he feels human again, but instead Hajime tries to bite all that back. 

“You must come from a really annoying alien race, then,” he says. “No wonder they didn’t want you anymore.” 

“Rude,” Tooru says, reaching out to flick Hajime’s shoulder, his finger scraping the fabric, and Hajime tightens his jaw so hard it hurts. It feels like nothing, when Tooru touches him through fabric like that, but maybe—maybe it would feel like something if Hajime stripped off his layers right here, on the sloping grass, took off his jacket and his t-shirt and let Tooru’s fingers graze him, feather-light. Maybe if Tooru’s mouth pressed there, against Hajime’s shoulder, against the warm skin there, made warmer by Tooru’s hesitant breath, if he moved his lips together to form a kiss, even the softest of touches branded into Hajime’s cell memory forever. 

They find a spot against the hill to sit down. There are no crop circles. 

They don’t have a blanket (Akaashi is also a more prepared Hajime) but Tooru spreads his snacks out across the dark grass anyway, his hair moving in ripples with the wind, a single curl getting caught in his eyelashes before he brushes it back. Hajime allows himself to stare at Tooru, at the easy line of his back as he leans against his wrists, at the tilt of his jaw, at the bump of his Adam’s apple. Even in the dark Tooru is beautiful, and it makes Hajime’s throat ache, because he sees it, too, what the specialists must see, or what they don’t quite see: that Tooru sometimes seems too beautiful to be human, that sometimes the swell of his emotions is overwhelming, that sometimes he drowns everyone around him for a few minutes. 

But then Tooru ducks his head and unwraps his milk bread, his perfect posture bending, more pieces of his sweaty hair falling over his face, and he begins to eat messily, the way he only lets Hajime see him eat. And the ache worsens, and Hajime has to look away. Under all of it, he knows that Tooru is painfully human, crippling under the weight of his own emotions, the irreparable impact they’ve had on others. Hajime has felt Tooru’s embarrassment over saying “ _ you too _ ” when a waitress tells them “ _ enjoy your meal, _ ” he has felt Tooru’s exam anxiety as he chews a pencil eraser in the classroom, Tooru’s momentary burst of irritation when he finishes last in a racing video game, Tooru’s sudden bubble of laughter when Kyoutani chucks a ball at another first-year, Tooru’s overly emotional response to a girl crying on his reality show about love. 

“Do you really think we’ll see aliens, Iwa-chan?” Tooru crumples up his wrapper and tosses it toward the pile. “You’re normally so skeptical about the true reality of the great universe.” 

Hajime is about to say that the crop circles are sure as hell not real, but then Tooru shivers, an almost imperceptible shudder that runs through his whole body, and Hajime remembers his extra warm up jacket, stowed away in his bag. “Why didn’t you bring a coat, dumbass,” he says, already leaning over to grab the jacket. “You’re going to freeze.” 

“It’s summer,” Tooru starts, but Hajime stuffs the warm up jacket into his hands anyway, and Tooru’s sentence trails off as he looks down at it. Slowly he pulls it over his head, his arms pushing out until the sleeves sit somewhere above his wrist bones, his hair standing on end where it’s caught against the collar. For a moment Tooru just sits there, gazing down at himself, the food scattered around them in the field, the tall grass bending down in waves as the wind blows through their bodies. Their legs are lying close together, and Tooru lifts his hands again to zip up the collar, burying his face into the jacket. 

Out here there are no lights and no sound. Hajime can only hear his own breathing, and he can’t take his eyes off Tooru. 

Tooru makes a small sound, then, muffled by the thick collar of Hajime’s jacket. His eyes raise, glassy, to the heavens, and after a moment he uncovers his mouth. In a very, very small voice, he says, “I want my emotions back.” 

Hajime’s throat constricts so tightly he can’t breathe. 

“I want to feel this,” Tooru says, his hands balling in Hajime’s jacket, still gazing up at the stars, a kind of desperation in his voice. “This is—I would’ve been so happy.”

“Don’t,” Hajime hears himself say, the only word he can manage,  _ don’t say it like, like you’re already gone.  _

“It’s true.” Tooru’s eyes lower to Hajime’s face, his eyebrows drawing together like he’s searching for something there, but there’s nothing behind Tooru’s dark eyes—no depth. “You brought me all the way out here just for the aliens. And you bought me food, and let me wear your jacket, and a year ago I would have killed for this stuff, all I wanted was to do this with you, remember how it was when we went on that tour?” 

Hajime does remember. 

He doesn’t want to. The memory hurts now. 

“I was so happy,” says Tooru, forcefully, like he can power his way to some kind of emotion, like if he’s emphatic enough, it will begin to mean something. “I was  _ happy,  _ Hajime. I want to be happy again now. I know I would have been.” 

“Don’t say it like that,” Hajime bites, his throat burning, his eyes burning. “I didn’t bring you out here so you would—so you would get all—I just wanted to do something for you.” 

Tooru swallows. Hajime sees it move down his throat, and he wants to throw it all away, their friendship, the stupid fucking rules, just to shove Tooru down on the dark ground and pin his shoulders and kiss him, his mouth rough on Tooru’s lips, his thigh between Tooru’s legs. It would be a bad way to touch him for the first time. But Hajime can barely restrain himself from doing it. 

“I never do anything for you,” says Tooru, sudden and quiet. “You’re always doing things for me, Iwa-chan. And I never ask what you need.”

“You don’t need to—”

“I can’t read your mind,” Tooru interrupts. The desperation is still straining his voice. “Not like you used to be able read mine, with the biomagnetism, it always—it always makes me feel like I don’t know you as well as you know me.” 

Hajime stills, his hands pausing, his throat tight. He never thought Tooru might feel that way. Tooru lowers his eyes, tugging on the too-short sleeves of Hajime’s jacket, and Hajime thinks of the way he felt that first night after Tooru got on the meds, when everything went radio silent. He never realized that this silence is the only thing Tooru ever felt. Tooru doesn’t know what it’s like to feel someone else’s biomagnetic field. 

“You do know me,” Hajime says into the night. The wind blows through them again, and Hajime wraps his arms around himself. “You know all of us, on the court, you always know—”

“It’s different,” Tooru interrupts. “Hajime. It’s different and you know it.” 

Hajime lets his words die. He does know. It’s even more different than Tooru thinks, because Hajime’s in love with him. 

Hajime’s in love with him. 

“Tooru,” he says, the name clumsy on his tongue, trying not to make it sound too affectionate, or not affectionate enough. “I trust you, you know? More than anyone. I trust you to know me well enough, even if it’s not perfect all the time.” 

There’s a long pause. Then Tooru lifts his hands to his face, rubbing at his cheeks, where his glasses would sit if he was wearing them. “I didn’t expect you to stay,” he says. “After the...after Sana. I didn’t expect you to still be able to read me when I can’t even read myself anymore.” 

Hajime’s throat swells again. He can’t always read Tooru anymore. Sometimes there’s nothing to read. Tooru is just Volleyball and Pretend lately, dead behind the eyes, his face tired when he’s caught alone, like nothing is quite worth it anymore. 

_ I’m in love with you, _ Hajime wants to say, but he knows it would be horrible because Tooru can’t love him back now, even if he wanted to, and Hajime’s eyes burn again. He doesn’t want to cry, even if it’s just in front of Tooru, because Tooru is supposed to be the one who cries, the one with explosive emotions and Hajime is supposed to be the steady dependable one, the rock. He rubs furiously at his face, like Tooru won’t notice, but Tooru does, leaning forward, catching Hajime’s wrist. 

Tooru’s fingers are rough, the skin peeling, the calluses on his palm pressing against Hajime’s pulse point. Any walls Hajime had up give way, and the tears come hot and humiliating, his lungs choking up at the very feeling of Tooru touching him, Tooru  _ holding  _ him, this small part of him, like Tooru can keep him together, and three months ago Hajime’s whole body would have burnt up from the thousands of their nerves alight from the touch—but now he feels nothing, only hot tears rolling down his face. And Tooru feels nothing. Hajime knows that Tooru feels nothing, and it hurts, it hurts, it  _ hurts.  _

“Hajime,” Tooru says, his eyebrows drawn together again, rubbing at his own face like the tears are his own. 

“Stop,” Hajime chokes, using the sleeve of his jacket to smear the tears, but Tooru grabs his other wrist and holds both his hands there, in front of him, and Hajime glares furiously at him through the tears, his heartbeat thumping from the veins Tooru is pressing closed. “Let go, assface. I’m not going to cry in front of you.” 

“You can,” says Tooru, and Hajime feels the heat burst in his chest again, part anger but mostly pain, the overwhelming ache of having everything he wants but not being able to reach any of it, Tooru touching him, Hajime fucking loving him, and it’s all too much. 

“I fucking can’t,” Hajime spits out, “I’m not supposed to fucking cry, idiot, I’m supposed to be the stable one, you’re the fucking crybaby, okay, so—” 

“Stop,” says Tooru. “Hajime. You can cry. You’re allowed to cry!” 

“I can’t just—”

“Cry for me,” Tooru says, his hands tugging at Hajime’s wrists, something painful in the way his fingers tighten, in the way his face creases. “Because I can’t anymore. Please, Hajime.” 

And then Hajime is sobbing, body-wrenching sobs, curling his legs up into his chest to protect himself against the painful noises that shudded through his lungs. It’s all too much, and Tooru’s hands slide from his wrists to his palms, holding his hands tightly, and Hajime cries for the years they couldn’t touch each other, for the years he wanted to, for the years he kept everything inside, and for the cold, papery slide of Tooru’s fingers against his knuckles, for the absence. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know this chapter is a bit short but it's one of my favorites. for some reason i find their dialogue so funny even when it's meant to be a serious moment so i find myself laughing when im probably supposed to be crying haha


	7. Chapter 7

That summer feels like the last in Hajime’s life. He can’t imagine making it through the year, through all the long seasons where nothing will change, and doing it all again.

They spend most of their days playing volleyball in the local park until the sun soaks through the blacktop and through their t-shirts, and most of their evenings lying on their backs across Hajime’s bed, eating colored ice and watching conspiracy theory documentaries upside-down. None of the videos explain the biomagnetism, but some of them offer alternatives: that Tooru may have a celestial being existing inside him, that he is an angel, that the Illuminati have planted a bomb in his ribcage, that he will live forever, that he will end the world. 

In between the days, between bringing Takeru to summer camp and running errands for their mothers and meeting Hanamaki and Matsukawa for two-on-two games, Tooru begins to do small things for Hajime. After Hajime finished crying like a child, that night on the field, Tooru said, “We should do something you want next,” although the only things Hajime wants are Tooru’s emotions back and for Tooru to kiss him under all their blankets and for Seijou to win Nationals. 

It’s not that Tooru never did anything for Hajime. Tooru has always praised him on the court and bought him things from the convenience store and finished his literature homework if Hajime was too tired, but now the things feel more tangible, more deliberate. Tooru leaves this muscle-pain cream in Hajime’s bathroom after a long week of practice, and he buys Hajime a glossy hardback book on the different butterflies in their area, and he begins to turn on the closed captions during the documentaries because he knows Hajime’s brain gets tired of listening. 

It’s the week before classes start again, before fall practice starts again, when Tooru offers to massage Hajime’s shoulders. 

“I—” Hajime cuts himself off, rubbing his upper arm, eyes darting to Tooru’s face and away. They’re just setting up the latest installment of the  _ Explaining the Unexplainable  _ docuseries they’re watching, and Tooru’s wearing Hajime’s clothes—an old t-shirt from this animal charity event the team did last year. It’s enough to make Hajime’s throat dry. “Are you allowed to—you know. Touch me?” 

Tooru shrugs, moving his hair off his forehead, dragging his bony ankles up onto Hajime’s bed. His legs are smooth, shaved (he says it helps with mobility) but they’re still mottled with dark bruises, from volleyball and the meds and Takeru kicking him. “You shouldn’t be able to feel anything,” he says. “The specialists upped my dosage this week.” 

“What?” Hajime stares at him. “Why?”

“ _ In preparation of the upcoming athletic season _ ,” Tooru parrots, already grabbing the muscle pain cream off Hajime’s bedside table. “They want to make sure Tobio-chan isn’t going to phone the authorities if I smile at him the wrong way.” 

Hajime has forgotten, spectacularly, that Kageyama will be a high-school student this year. The realization makes his stomach cold. “Is that really why?” 

“I don’t know, Iwa-chan,” says Tooru. “They just said that hormones are high during games, and they don’t want anyone getting hurt if I knock into them at the net.” 

Hajime just nods. He doesn’t ask if Tooru’s mother approved the new prescription or not. Tooru and his mother don’t pick up the pills at the pharmacy themselves, the specialists put them directly into Tooru’s plastic medication case, and Hajime knows this means the pills could be anything. The specialists could solidify arsenic one day and feed it to Tooru through a tiny gray pill. 

Hajime wonders sometimes what would happen if Tooru just never went back to the lab. 

He knows that the specialists would find him anyway. 

“Take off your shirt?” Tooru asks, uncapping the muscle cream, and Hajime can already feel the flush moving up his neck, burning in his cheeks, but he knows Tooru doesn’t mean it that way. He’s seen Hajime shirtless before, plenty of times. They change in the same locker room, for god’s sake, Hajime has see the pale birthmark under Tooru’s left ribcage and the dimples at the small of his back, and once, in middle school, Tooru showed their whole team how his nipples are a little lopsided. 

So Hajime pulls his shirt up over his arms, baring his back. He ducks his chin, staring at his lap, and wills himself not to flinch. His pulse is already picking up, throat fluttering at the thought of what it will feel like, Tooru’s pretty hands on him, long fingers pressing into Hajime’s muscles. His back has been tight lately, he’s been twisting it around a lot lately on the court, and Tooru must have noticed. 

Tooru is paying attention, so much attention. Hajime closes his eyes. Tooru’s the same way about Hanamaki and Matsukawa, like he’s already planning how to help all their teammates reach their full potential this season. Even though Tooru can no longer feel emotions, he hasn’t forgotten theirs. 

“It’s cold,” warns Tooru, just before he touches Hajime, “just like your heart, Iwa-chan.” 

His hands  _ are  _ cold. Hajime is shocked breathless, when Tooru touches his back, first with his fingertips and then, slowly, his whole palms, smoothing the cream along Hajime’s skin, up to the sensitive expanse of his neck, down to the space between his shoulder blades. Hajime stares at the wall across from his bed, where the docuseries is still loaded onto the TV, his eyes blurring. He can’t feel the biomagnetism, just like Tooru promised, but he feels Tooru, Tooru’s skin, touching him. 

It’s almost as overwhelming. 

“So quiet, Iwa-chan,” says Tooru, clicking his tongue. “I should be nice to you more often.” 

“I’m not the chatty one,” Hajime says, and it’s meant to be a snap, but it comes out strained, almost breathless. Hajime hates himself. He forces himself to swallow, to blink, to focus on the TV screen instead of Tooru’s fingertips gliding up his spine. Tooru’s short fingertips scrape across the top of Hajime’s back, right where Hajime’s tanline must be, and Hajime has to choke back a small whine. 

It shouldn’t feel good, Tooru’s barely touching him, but Hajime can feel the cracked dry skin of Tooru’s thumbs, rubbing the cream into Hajime’s shoulders, and he can feel the calluses at the heels of each of Tooru’s palms. Tooru passes one hand over the top of his shoulder, a ghost of a touch, brushing something away, and Hajime screws up his eyes again because fuck it, Tooru can’t even see his face. 

And then Tooru digs his fingers in. 

This time Hajime  _ does  _ yelp, jumping a little on the bed, Tooru’s thumbs pressing hard and painful into the muscles of both his shoulders, and Tooru immediately releases him, saying, “Sorry, sorry.” 

Hajime catches his breath, rubbing his mouth, trying to relax back onto the mattress. He feels one of Tooru’s knees press into his lower back and nearly chokes again, but he manages to reign himself in. “S’okay,” he says, “just surprised me.” 

“Sorry,” says Tooru again, his hands already returning to Hajime’s back. “I’ll be gentler. Tell me if I hurt you again.” 

“It’s supposed to hurt.” 

“It’s not supposed to,” says Tooru. “Well, only a little. I have to get the knots out.” 

Hajime goes quiet again when Tooru pushes into his shoulders again. It does hurt, but Hajime’s shoulders already ached, and the pain of Tooru’s hands massaging him is bearable. Tooru shifts into a comfortable position and presses play on the docuseries, and Hajime tries to focus on it, but his mind keeps wandering to Tooru’s hands rubbing hard, tight circles into his muscles. Tooru’s hands keep wandering, too, reaching up to Hajime’s neck to brush away loose hair, sliding beneath his shoulderblades to press under the bone, his nails scraping against the sensitive skin near Hajime’s sides. 

Of course Hajime’s hyperfixated on Tooru’s hands. He tells himself it’s normal. Tooru hasn’t been allowed to touch him for years. 

“How do you know how to do this?” Hajime asks, once most of the knots have smoothed out and his shoulders are relaxing back into Tooru’s soft palms. Does Tooru massage the pain out of his own muscles, or maybe the specialists do it for him? Maybe his mother does it. Knowing Tooru, no one does, and Tooru continues to play with tight shoulders. 

“Uh.” Tooru shifts on the bed behind him, and the mattress moves, and Tooru holds onto Hajime’s shoulders to keep him steady. At that angle, his fingertips rest against the edges of Hajime’s collarbone, and Hajime’s throat goes dry again, traitorously. “I watched some videos.” He coughs a little, then says, sounding embarrassed, “I used to follow a couple of massage vloggers, I thought it looked...nice. Just the way they touched people. I thought it must be nice, you know, to have someone touch you like that.” 

Hajime blinks at the screen. It dawns on him that Tooru must be touch-starved. Tooru craves touch like that, he watches videos just to imagine what it feels like. Of course the specialists don’t massage the pain from his muscles. They never take off those gloves, and how long has it been since someone besides his mother hugged Tooru? touched his face? his hands, his beautiful hands?

Hajime twists around so quickly so that his elbow knocks into Tooru’s chest, sending him toppling backward. “Let me do you now.” 

Tooru pauses with his hand already pressed over his chest, lips forming a whine over Hajime hurting him. His mouth works for a moment, surprised. “What?” 

“Your shoulders are probably tight as hell, too,” Hajime says, determined to fight down the blush burning in his face. He hastily pulls the shirt back over his head. “Let me work on them.” 

Tooru glances at the jar of pain relief cream. “You’re not supposed to.” But he doesn’t sound convinced. 

“Fuck that,” Hajime says. “What are they going to do? Surgically attach gloves to my hands?” 

“That would definitely affect your spikes,” Tooru concedes. Hajime glares at him, and Tooru ducks his head, tugging on the old t-shirt he’s wearing until it pops over his curls. He lets it fall onto the mattress, and Hajime keeps his eyes determinedly on Tooru’s face so he won’t glance at his nipples to see if they’re still lopsided. Tooru’s face is pink, and Hajime doesn’t know if it’s the light or the prospect of being touched like the massage clients in those videos. 

“Sit here,” Hajime says, scrambling away from his spot on the edge of the mattress, and Tooru switches places with him, the muscles in his back moving and shifting as he scoots his body forward. Tooru’s shoulders are wider than his waist, a V shape like a model, and Hajime can see the slight slope of his spine, the indents just above the pair of Hajime’s shorts he’s wearing. 

Unbidden, Hajime wonders if Tooru is wearing his underwear, too. 

He has to press his own knuckles into his mouth, his face burning, to scold himself for thinking something so fucking inappropriate. Luckily Tooru doesn’t look at him, he just hugs his upper arms like he’s cold or nervous or both, and as Hajime scoots closer, his cheeks hot, he can see the goosebumps raised all along Tooru’s shoulders. Tooru cold and Hajime hot. It’s fitting, he thinks irritably, as he grabs the jar. Tooru is too numb and Hajime is too angry, and maybe that’s the way it’ll always be, until they grow old and die together. 

“I’m going to touch you now,” Hajime says to the quiet room, the docuseries forgotten in the background, and his face feels like it’s on fire but he clenches his jaw. He has to warn Tooru. Hajime hasn’t touched him since they were fourteen. 

There’s a pause, and Tooru nods, and Hajime barely allows himself to wonder if it’s because Tooru’s throat is choked up, too. He touches the cream to Tooru’s back, and he’s surprised at how warm the skin is, how alive it feels when Hajime presses his palms there. He can feel Tooru moving, the shallow intake of breath, the ripple of his exhale. He can feel Tooru’s pulse running underneath the warm skin, all his cells working together somehow, the biomagnetism locked deep inside, so deep Hajime must be imagining it. 

Hajime just sits there, like an idiot, breathing and staring at his own tanned fingers against Tooru’s ghostly bruised back, for a whole minute before he remembers he’s meant to be moving. 

The flush has spread all the way down to his chest, now, but Hajime’s determined to do this anyway, for Tooru. Because maybe it’s something Tooru’s been wanting, maybe for a long time, even though he doesn't want it the same way Hajime wants—he doesn’t want Hajime to slide his hands around to his warm chest and press into the muscle of his pecs, thumbs grazing over his nipples, but oh, he would probably make the most delicious sound if Hajime did it, just palmed his chest and held Tooru there, solid with his back against Hajime’s heart. Hajime has to bite the inside of his cheek hard to make himself stop. It’s inappropriate, and later Hajime is going to have to punch his pillow very, very hard, after he touches himself to the thought of the surprised whimper Tooru would give. 

He tries to focus on Tooru’s back, on the places where his muscles are tightest. It’s difficult; Tooru’s whole back is a myriad of knots, of bruises and tight spots. Everywhere Hajime presses his thumbs, Tooru breathes in sharply or hisses out. “You need to do this more often,” Hajime says, staring down at the little curl of hair at the base of Tooru’s neck while he massages the bottom of his shoulders. 

“With who? My mom?” 

“I can do it,” says Hajime. He doesn’t really think it through before he says it, but it’s true, isn’t it? That’s Hajime’s job; take care of Tooru. “Whenever you feel sore, you have to tell me, asshole. Or you’re going to end up hurting yourself.” 

Tooru is quiet again, except for his short, sporadic breathing, He gasps a little when Hajime presses his thumbs into a knot above his shoulder blade. “Ah—okay. If you say so.” 

Hajime keeps working at his shoulders for the length of two docuseries episodes, but he doesn’t know what happens in either of them. He’s only paying attention to the way Tooru’s breaths even out before jumping again, depending on how Hajime is touching him. The light touches across his neck or shoulders make him shiver, and the hard press against his muscles makes his breath hitch. But when Hajime smoothes his hands across the expanse of warm skin, laying his palms flat on Tooru’s back, fingers spreading across the constellation of bruises and faint summer freckles, Tooru’s breath relaxes, and his body does, too, like he trusts Hajime’s hands there. 

“Does it feel okay?” Hajime asks, quietly, when he’s done massaging but still stalling, rubbing small circles into the base of Tooru’s neck, pretending not to notice the way Tooru arches his head to the side, giving Hajime’s broad hands more room. 

“Uh-huh.” Tooru’s voice wavers, barely above a whisper. 

“Just tell me next time, dumbass,” Hajime says, and he means more than the tight muscles. He means the touch thing, too, he means the soft huff from Tooru’s chest when Hajime presses his thumb to the top of his spine, he means everything. 

* * *

  
  


Tooru isn’t supposed to drink on any of his meds, and Hajime has only had the opportunity a couple of times, when Matsukawa’s parents go on trips and his older brother brings them alcohol. But a couple of days before classes start, Sugawara apparently has a breakdown about his love life, and Tooru texts Hajime to come over and bring whatever mixers he has. 

Hajime finds soda in the back of his fridge and kisses his mom goodbye and heads over. He’s never really hung out with Tooru and his setter friends, but he expects that there will be a lot of whining about heartless girls. 

But when Hajime arrives, Suga seems like his normal composed self, wearing a cardigan and slippers, no traces of tears anywhere. He gives Hajime a slightly manic, polite smile as Hajime sets down the soda, and immediately asks if Hajime wants to “pop a bar” with him. 

Hajime squints. “Did you just offer me drugs?”

“Don’t give Iwa-chan drugs,” Tooru says, tossing a throw pillow across the couch at Suga’s arm, and it topples over the arm of the couch onto the floor. “He’s a hard-ass. He’s practically the police.” 

Hajime glares at him, bending down to grab the pillow and stalking toward Tooru, and Tooru immediately puts his hands up to shield his glasses, shrieking. 

“Mercy! Mercy!” 

Hajime whips the pillow at his face, and Tooru shrieks again, batting it away, his leg shooting out to kick Hajime in the shin. Hajime stumbles forward, catching onto the back of the couch so he’s braced over Tooru, and maybe he would tackle him, pinning him into the cushions, now that he’s tentatively allowed to touch Tooru again. But Suga is blinking at them with something too shrewd to be innocence, and Hajime stands up hastily and backs away before Suga stares directly into his gross, inappropriate soul. 

The doorbell rings, and Tooru uses the opportunity to scramble up, knocking the pillow to the group again, saying, “Akaachan!” and squirming past Hajime. Hajime is suddenly too nervous to look at Suga again, so he just says, “Are we going to drink?” and Suga says, “Oh, yes!” and stands to go with him into the kitchen. 

Hajime sees the note Tooru’s mom left— _ Don’t eat all the cupcakes! _ —which means she’s away for the night, and he and Suga pour the drinks while Tooru leads Akaashi into the living room. Akaashi is apologizing for something (bus tickets and Bokuto).

“So, Hajime,” says Suga, as soon as they’re all seated around the couches again, and Hajime doesn’t like the sneaky innocence in his voice, or the way he casually uses Hajiime’s given name, so Hajime quickly take a drink and cuts in, 

“Uh, who’s the girl?” 

Suga blinks. “The girl?” 

“Yeah, the, uh—” Hajime waves his hand. This isn’t his crowd, and his face feels kind of warm with the way they’re all staring at him, suddenly. Isn’t this what Suga came over to break down about? “Tooru said—Oikawa said you’re having relationship problems, or something.” 

“Oh,” says Suga slowly. “ _ Tooru _ said.” 

Hajime’s face flushes warmer. God. He  _ never  _ messes up, not anymore, he’s been calling Tooru  _ Oikawa  _ since middle school, but somehow in five seconds Suga has rattled him enough that he’s stumbling over names. “Yeah,” he says, furiously trying to stamp down the blush. “He said you were having girl problems?” 

“Well,” says Suga, leaning against the arm of the couch, propping his patterned socks up on the cushions. “Well, the girl’s name is Michimiya, but she’s not...I mean, I’m not…I mean, it’s sort of complicated. I don’t want to bore you. I don’t want to talk about that tonight, anyway.”

From the other couch, Akaashi whispers in a not-whisper, “Did you not tell him?” 

“Shush!” says Tooru. “Suga doesn’t want to talk about this. Let’s talk about something else. How has Bokuto been preparing for the season?”

“You just want to infiltrate our lineup,” says Akaashi. 

“How could you suspect me of something so manipulative!” 

“Because you always do it, Oikawa-san.” 

Tooru pouts. “I’m only asking about Bokuto to make sure he’s acting right. Right, Suga? We have to keep an eye out for our little Akaachan.” 

Akaashi gives him a blank, unimpressed stare, and Hajime feels a prickle of discomfort, shifting on the couch. Is he not supposed to know about Akaashi and Bokuto? Akaashi posts about their relationship on social media, so it’s not exactly private, but on the other hand, the account Hajime made to stalk them is a secret. And Akaashi doesn’t know that Hajime walked in on him and Bokuto making out in the gym that one time. What if Tooru told them that Hajime is homophobic? Obviously he’s not,  _ obviously,  _ but he can’t exactly—

“I need advice!” Suga jumps in suddenly. “For volleyball. You know our ace, the scary-looking one...well, he’s throwing this bitch-fit, and…” 

He goes into a long, complicated story about the Karasuno ace trying to leave the team, and the more Hajime drinks and the more they talk about volleyball, the more Hajime allows himself to relax. Akaashi talks about Bokuto the same way Matsukawa used to talk about his girlfriend, casually and simply, and Suga gets loud and waves his hands around a lot when he gets drunk, but they’re both— _ easier  _ than Hajime expected. Of course they’re just people. He should have known that, and he feels idiotic for being intimidated by Tooru’s pretty friends, this other life he seemed to have, outside of Hajime. 

Suga giggles at one of Akaashi’s dry comments, at one point, and briefly leans against Hajime. He’s warm, and Hajime actually feels himself smile a little. Sugawara isn’t a bad guy, and he and Akaashi are good for Tooru, they bolster up that part of him Hajime can’t quite relate to, the setter things and the photography and the brunch.

“We’re going to win Nationals this year,” Suga announces, lifting a clumsy fist in the air, and Tooru tosses the throw pillow at his chest again. 

“In your dreams, loverboy,” Tooru crows, looking proud and content, if not quite happy. “I’m going to crush your ass, just you wait.” 

* * *

But he doesn’t get the chance to, because before they’ve even reached the first official game of the season, Karasuno replaces Suga with Tobio Kageyama. 

Tooru doesn’t handle it well.

Hajime knew Tooru would struggle with Kageyama back in the playable circuit, but this feels like the worst possible placement. It’s not like Tooru and Suga ever go easy on each other, that’s not how their friendship works, but in between sets Tooru always seemed a little lighter, laughing more, teasing on the opposite side of the net instead of just with Seijou, like he was enjoying playing more than just enjoying winning. Even in his lowest points, even when he didn’t show it, Hajime knew Tooru looked forward to playing Karasuno, and when he shook hands with Daichi and Suga after games, he was still gleeful and arrogant, but in a softer way, like he knew they wouldn’t believe it. 

Playing Karasuno is no longer like that. It’s like the universe has decided to take this final blip of joy out of volleyball, turning the game into a cold, hard competition, focused narrowly on beating Kageyama. 

After only a month Hajime is exhausted. Tooru goes back to staying late after practice every night, and Hajime begins to do his homework on the gym floor while tuning out the squeak of Tooru’s sneakers running and leaping on the shiny floor, and the constant slamming of balls on the opposite side of the court as he serves, and serves, and serves. Gone are the lazy summer days when they only practiced until they got tired. The docuseries they were watching remains unfinished. Hajime starts doing Tooru’s homework, too. 

“You know Kageyama isn’t going to beat you just because you  _ think  _ he’s going to beat you,” Hajime says, bringing Tooru a damp towel after a particularly bad day, when Tooru is sitting on the floor against the basket of volleyballs, holding his right knee and gazing blankly out on the court. Hajime presses the towel to Tooru’s forehead, and Tooru jumps slightly, shaking himself, but the dazed look doesn’t leave his eyes. 

“Hm? What did you say, Iwa-chan?” 

Hajime considers repeating himself and decides it’s not worth it. 

“We should go home,” he says instead. Kageyama and his looming presence will still be here tomorrow, but he doesn’t say that either. For Hajime, thinking about Kageyama will always mean thinking about that waiting room in the lab, feeling his hopes sink into dread while Kageyama told the specialists that Tooru was a monster. “Your mom is probably waiting.” 

It’s nearing midnight. But when Tooru struggles to his feet and says, “Ten more minutes, Hajime, just ten more,” Hajime doesn’t argue. 

  
  


* * *

It’s Tooru’s legs, now, that Hajime massages, mostly late at night, because they’re at school from early morning until late at night. Hajime packs both lunch and dinner, these days, and Tooru drinks so much coffee to stay awake that Hanamaki says he’ll have a heart attack by the time he’s fifty. And if they get home before midnight, sometimes they sit on the living room couch and Hajime works the muscle pain cream into Tooru’s calves and lower thighs. 

It’s strange, touching him regularly, after years of not touching him at all. One night Hajime’s focusing on kneading a tight spot above Tooru’s right knee and Tooru whines softly, in pain, and Hajime glances up at him, and in the dimly lit living room, with Tooru biting his lip like that, Hajime feels himself shiver with the intense intimacy of it all. It feels dangerous, like something between them has shifted imperceptibly, under the weight of all these late nights, when they’re both slightly insane by lack of sleep and physical exhaustion. For once Hajime and Tooru are together in their insanity. This has never happened before. 

This is another, unspoken rule: Tooru is supposed to be alone in this. He is supposed to remain patient zero. There is never supposed to be a patient one.

“Can I ask you something?” says Tooru, hushed, running a hand along the top of the couch, pulling at a loose thread. Hajime sits back on his heels, hyperaware of the way he’s been hunched over Tooru’s lower legs, but he doesn’t release Tooru’s knee. The muscles there are knotted up beyond belief—Tooru hasn’t been stretching enough. 

“What?” Hajime asks, afraid of what the question might be, something like  _ Hajime, why are you doting on me so much, caring for me and my health like this, staying with me all hours of the day, I’ll begin to think you like me or something,  _ although that’s not a question, it’s an undeniable truth, and Hajime knows he won’t be able to deny it, if Tooru asks, and—

“What did it used to feel like to touch me?” asks Tooru. “Before the meds.” 

Hajime can feel the heaviness of the question on his tongue. He still remembers the time right after his diagnosis when Tooru touched him in his bedroom, and how afraid he was, but somehow, Hajime feels deep in his bones that if Tooru touched him now, even with the full force of his biomagnetism, Hajime would be able to withstand any pain. “It felt like a live wire,” he says slowly, “like touching an open circuit, except instead of dying, I started feeling everything at once.” 

“All my emotions?” 

Hajime nods. “But it was like being hooked up directly to you, instead of guessing at everything through vibrations in the air. It felt–it felt kind of incredible, I guess. Kind of indescribable.” 

Tooru looks down at his knee, where Hajime is still methodically kneading at his muscle. “Did it make you confused?” he asks. “Did you think the emotions were yours?” 

“No,” says Hajime. “I know the difference between you and me, idiot.” It’s sad how far Hajime has fallen, that even his insults sound like endearments, now. “I wish you could feel it. Like, I wish we could switch biomagnetic fields for a day and you could feel mine. I think you’d be less afraid of it that way.” 

Tooru is quiet for a long time. In the back of his mind, Hajime thinks maybe he said the wrong thing, but he’s too tired to worry much. He simply moves to Tooru’s other leg, and Tooru obediently bends at the knee so that Hajime can reach his calf. 

“I’m more afraid of myself than you are,” Tooru says finally, quiet, and Hajime knows it's a question even though it’s not phrased like one. 

“You always have been,” Hajime says, reaching back into the jar and smoothing the cream over the prickly skin behind Tooru’s left knee. “You’re a big scaredy-cat, though. Remember when you used to be scared of spiders? And that one dress your mom used to wear?” 

Tooru smacks him on the top of the head, but it’s so flimsy that it feels more like a pat, his tired hand lying flat on Hajime’s hair for a minute, his thumb ghosting over Hajime’s forehead. Hajime almost closes his eyes into the warm weight of Tooru’s hand before Tooru pulls away with a slow drag of his fingers. “That’s mean, Hajime,” he says. “That dress was hideous. Anyone would be afraid of teal and purple and orange together.” 

“You’re just a twat,” Hajime says, digging his fingers into the hard flesh as revenge, and Tooru hisses out, letting his head drop back against the pillows. Hajime continues to work in silence before he remembers something else he’s been wanting to ask Tooru, for a while now, but especially since he started seeing Tooru take his meds every day, since they’re both at the gym so late. “It’s my turn to ask a question.” 

“Mm?” 

“What do the meds really make you feel like?” Hajime can guess, of course, he knows about the numbness, the apathy. But Tooru never talks about it. He just continues pretending to be his same old fake self, even though the silence of his biomagnetism speaks volumes for him. 

Tooru lifts his head again, although Hajime can’t see his expression well in the dark. It’s not like Tooru’s expressions have much emotion to give away anyway. After a minute, he says, “I just feel empty now. And helpless. Like I can’t do anything. Because nothing’s there.” 

Hajime bites on his cheek, hard. It’s not a surprise, but it’s still not the answer he would’ve liked. “But you...on the court, you’re still…” 

“Volleyball doesn’t take emotion,” says Tooru. He sounds like he’s been half-dead for a hundred years, and Hajime presses his fingers in deeper, rolling them across a taut muscle, and Tooru breathes out, hard. “It’s just a game. And I’m going to make sure we win.”

Hajime nods, because he believes Tooru, but not because he’s sure, anymore, that winning is exactly what either of them want.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all! 
> 
> i'm so deeply sorry for the several weeks i took off from posting this fic. the holidays really took their toll on me. however i have returned and i will try to return to regular uploads! thank u so so much for all the support on the last chapter and i hope you enjoy all the cuddling iwaoi will be having from here-on out :)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings in the end notes babes :)

They win. 

They win and they win and they win. 

If second-year Tooru was a monster, third-year Tooru is a whole natural disaster, a hurricane on the court. Hajime begins to see the fear in the teams they play, the anxious tightness of their huddles, the nervous fumbling of their receives. Everyone in the prefecture has heard of Oikawa Tooru, either because of his killer serves or the mysterious medical professionals who linger on Seijou’s sideline, and this year, the specialists aren’t the only ones watching. There are scouts, now, too, scouts approaching Tooru after matches, holding clipboards in a way that makes Hajime irrationally afraid. 

One of the scouts wears a medical mask when he talks to Tooru and Hajime has to turn his back and take deep breaths to stop himself from running over and shoving the man far, far away from Tooru. It all reminds him too much of the lab, of the specialists with their blue medical gloves and their clipboards and their cold, expressionless faces. 

More girls fill their stands, too, and guys wearing Aoba Johsai merch, and Hajime even sees people wearing these jerseys with OIKAWA and the number 1 on them, as if Tooru is their favorite pro player. It’s all too much for Tooru’s ego, so Hajime and the team give him more shit than ever, but deep down Hajime feels more and more unsettled as the semester stretches on. 

  
The problem is, this kind of success isn’t sustainable—it can’t be. Tooru is only a high schooler, no matter what his fan club thinks, and he’s also human, no matter what the specialists say. By the end of first quarter, he and Hajime are averaging five hours of sleep a night, and all the medication is really affecting Tooru’s participation in his classes. Hajime sees him fail a literature essay, which he quickly turns face-down on his desk, and even his physics grade is slipping. That’s Tooru’s best class. One day Hajime sees him snapping a white bar under his desk before an exam, and he’s going to say something—Tooru shouldn’t be taking study drugs, who knows how they’ll will interact with all his other meds—but then he sees the dark circles under Tooru’s eyes and he suddenly can’t say anything at all. 

But they’re winning, Tooru reminds him, in a too-harsh voice when they’re sneaking out of the gym at one in the morning, they’re winning. 

* * *

“Where’s Oikawa?” asks Hajime, glancing around the gym. Tooru’s never late to practice. Today, Hajime is technically late, since he had to stay after and write a detention after swearing during an in-class debate. His teacher said something like, “You teenage boys don’t have to be so  _ angry  _ all the time,” and Hajime had nearly sworn again and gotten an even longer detention. 

Hanamaki glances up from the bench, where he’s icing his ankle. “Oh, he’s not coming until later.” 

Hajime’s warning signals go up immediately. He can’t help it. The only place Tooru goes nowadays are practice and the lab, and lab visits are less frequent now that Tooru’s meds are so powerful. Hajime’s already grabbing his cell phone as he asks, “Where is he?” 

Hanamaki shrugs. “Some woman wanted to talk to him. Said it would take a little while.” 

That doesn’t help, that doesn’t help at all, and Hajime flips over his phone and nearly drops it, swearing loudly, the curse he wanted to shout at his teacher earlier. Hanamaki winces. 

“Jesus, Iwaizumi,” he says, but Hajime’s already pressing Tooru’s contact number, pressing the phone to his ear, waiting with his hands itching for the damn thing to ring. The woman could just be another scout, or even another school’s student come to confess, but what if she’s not? What if she’s another one of  _ them,  _ another specialist? What if she’s come to take Tooru away? 

The phone beeps, and Tooru’s obnoxious voicemail rings in Hajiime’s ears.  _ “Iwa-chan, why are you so obsessed with me? _ ” Hajime grinds his teeth together. It’s the most irritating voicemail in the world, he’s told Tooru a million times to change it. Everyone who calls him shouldn’t have to hear him crow,  _ Iwa-chan!  _ It’s fucking inappropriate, and what’s even more fucking inappropriate is that Tooru isn’t answering his phone. How’s Hajime supposed to know if he’s in danger? What if the specialists have taken away his phone this time, hidden it somewhere so Hajime can never even get a hold of him and by the time he gets home Tooru’s house will be dark and—

“Hey,” Hanamaki’s voice says, and Hajime realizes his arm is shaking with how hard he’s clenching the phone, pressing it to his ear, but he can’t untense it, he can’t let go, and Hanamaki’s concerned face swims into view. “Iwaizumi, you good?” 

Hajime isn’t good. He tries to unclench his jaw to snap that no, he’s not, but he can’t. Hanamaki reaches out hesitantly, then changes his mind and drops his hands. 

“I think Oikawa’s okay,” Hanamaki says awkwardly. “Come on, let’s just get to practice, he’ll show up when he’s ready.” 

Hajime sees the gym blur in his line of sight, the bright yellow, the white stripes of the court, the mats against the wall. He can only press the phone harder to the side of his face, so hard it hurts, trying to batter down a surge of frustration and rage so powerful he wants to scream—no thoughts, only anger—but it passes in a heaving breath, and Hajime’s vision goes fuzzy for a long second as his hand finally eases on the phone. 

“Just a sec,” he manages to gasp, stumbling back half a step to sag onto the bench, trying to catch himself from collapsing, trying to catch his breath. His head wavers, black spots blurring in and out in front of his eyes, and he puts his face into his hands for a long moment, trying to put the world back together. 

It feels a bit like being drunk, a bit like standing up too fast after a too-intense workout. 

He realizes too late that it’s exhaustion. 

“Hey, Iwaizumi,” Hanamaki’s voice says from somewhere above him. “I’m gonna grab Coach, okay?” 

Hajime can’t answer. He can only focus on breathing, closing his eyes so he won’t see the black spots anymore. It’s all too much. Tooru, he doesn’t know where Tooru is, and they barely slept last night, Tooru wanted to watch the Shiratorizawa/Date Tech match, and what if Tooru is in danger? And Hajime failed him again? And Hajime can’t even stand up to go find him, his head’s spinning, and if he stops focusing, he’s going to stop breathing entirely and topple backwards off the bench and—

“Iwaizumi.” It’s Coach, his hand on Hajime’s back, warm and sweaty. Hajime drags in a quick, shaky breath and tries to raise his head, but it sends another wave of dizziness through his body, and he has to grip the edges of the bench just to keep himself upright. 

“Sorry,” he says, surprised by the steadiness of his own voice, although it’s raspy, like he’s been shouting. “I just–”

“I knew you two were overworking yourselves,” Coach says gruffly. “This isn’t how to win, Iwaizumi, practicing at all hours of the night. I expect this kind of behavior from Oikawa, but I thought you, at least, would know better.” 

Guilt swims in Hajime’s head, the anger almost entirely drained away. Coach is right. Coach is right, and Hajime is failing him and Tooru both. 

“How can you be our ace if you’re too tired to play?” Coach says, smacking Hajime on the back, and Hajime winces, trying not to let it show on his face. “You need to get home. Get a good night’s sleep and you’ll be up and at ‘em in time for our practice match with Karasuno tomorrow.” 

“But Oikawa—”

“I’m sending him home early, too,” says Coach. “As soon as he gets here I’m turning him away. And you need to start cutting down on the extra practice. It won’t be worth it if one of you gets injured.” 

Hajiime forces another breath, nodding. Coach is right. Hajime is irresponsible. He’s been allowing Tooru to practice dangerously often—he’s been putting the entire team at risk. Hajime is supposed to be the ace. He’s not supposed to be irresponsible. 

“I’ll go home,” he says, and Coach stands there with his arms folded while Hajime struggles to his feet, closing and opening his eyes and trying to orient himself, and gathers his things together. Hajime doesn’t look at any of the others while he slinks out of the gym. He doesn’t want to have to face them while he’s letting them down, going home early, unable to help at one of their more important practices. Tomorrow they’re facing Karasuno, and if they don’t win—

Hajime doesn’t even want to think about what will happen if they don’t win. 

He means to search the school for Tooru before he leaves, just in case the specialists are interrogating him in a classroom (unlikely), but he catches sight of the teacher who gave him detention and hurries as quickly as he can toward the doors. The fresh air helps, a little, but Hajime is in such a daze that before he knows it, his feet have led him home, and he hasn’t looked for Tooru. 

Hajime unlocks the door and sags against the entryway wall. He wouldn’t be able to save Tooru anyway, so what’s the point? 

* * *

Hajime falls asleep as soon as he collapses onto the couch, so when he wakes up, it’s to the news blaring loudly on the television. Hajime groans loudly, rubbing at his face, pulling his aching head out of the pillows. 

“Haji, look at this,” says his mom, who’s standing with the remote. Hajime is about to snap that he doesn’t care what it is, he just wants to sleep, but then he glances at the screen and his jaw drops open. 

It’s Tooru. 

  
  


Tooru is on the television.

Tooru, standing in the sunlight in front of the school, silhouetted by pretty trees and the blue sky, a woman holding a microphone in his face. Tooru’s teeth are so, so white when he smiles, and Hajime can only gape at his mouth as the woman says, “I’m here with Oikawa Tooru, the star of the Aoba Johsai men’s volleyball team, who’s becoming quite the local sensation. Oikawa-kun, how does it feel to be so famous in your hometown?”

“Oh, I’ve always been famous around here,” Tooru says cheekily, his laugh making the woman laugh, and Hajime’s eyes rise to Tooru’s eyes, so big and flat on the screen. 

“Some people are even wearing your jersey,” the woman says. “Have you seen them in the stands?” 

“Of course,” says Tooru. “I’m so thankful for all my fans! I love them as much as they love me, you know. A few of them have tried to buy my official jersey, but it’s lucky, I can’t sell it.” 

“Is that so?” The woman sounds charmed, affectionate and pleased the way many adults who don’t know Tooru behave around him. “What makes it so lucky?” 

“Well,” says Tooru, with another perfect smile, the only that teases the line between boyish-and-mischievous and hot-and-charming, “I always make Iwa-chan wash our jerseys together in the laundry, to maximize our good luck. We’ve been friends since we were babies, you know, we’ve done it ever since we started playing together, and I always say, why ruin a good thing?” 

Hajime’s mom gives a choked little laugh, putting her hand over her mouth, and Hajime just stares at the screen, trying to process what Tooru just admitted to the entire world. For the rest of his life, a video will exist on the internet of Hajime being called  _ Iwa-chan,  _ revealing that he washes his volleyball uniform along with the uniform of the guy he has a crush on, because Tooru swears it’s good luck and because Hajiime—stupid, idiotic Hajime—kind of likes when their clothes smell alike. Stupid Hajime. Stupid, fucking Hajime and stupid fucking Tooru. 

“I’m gonna kill him,” Hajime says, loudly, over whatever dumb thing the interviewer says next, throwing the blankets off and scrambliing to his feet. Luckily the world doesn’t spin this time, but when he glances outside, it’s dark–he must have slept for several hours. He’s grabbing his shoes before his mom can finish saying, “Come on, Haji, let’s watch the rest of the interview,” and he ignores her, because he’s focused on one thing and that thing is killing Oikawa Tooru. 

He’s pounding up Tooru’s stairs a minute later, throwing his body against his bedroom door so it bounces open, slamming against Tooru’s dresser. He’s ready to grab Tooru out of bed and demand to know  _ what the fuck  _ he was thinking, but when he whips the blankets away, he’s stuck standing there breathing hard, glancing around the room. Tooru’s not here. Didn’t he come home after filming that stupid interview? Or did he—did the specialists take him away again? Did they dislike Tooru’s face on the television? Is that going to be a new rule—Tooru must stay hidden away, kept a secret, public enemy number one?

Hajime can’t—he can’t think about this right now. He needs to find Tooru. 

He burns through the whole house, slamming doors open, even opening fucking cabinets—Tooru’s not here, he’s not here. He must be at the lab. There’s no one home, Tooru’s mom is out again, so Hajime chucks his phone at the back of Tooru’s couch and shouts, loud and long and wordless—almost a shriek, almost a roar—he fucking  _ can’t  _ do this he can’t he can’t he can’t he—

“Iwa-chan!” 

Hajime spins around, lungs cutting off, grabbing the kitchen counter—Tooru’s standing in the dark doorway to his backyard, still wearing his practice uniform, a volleyball tucked under his arm. Hajime can’t breathe, so he does the next thing he can think of—he grabs Tooru by the shoulders, crowding up into his space, and Tooru backs into the door, licking at the corner of his mouth. 

“Iwa-chan, what—”

“What the fuck!” Hajime shouts in his face, hands clenching on Tooru’s jersey so hard it hurts, his body thundering with the embarrassment of being caught shouting like a caveman and the pent-up rage from earlier and the fear, the fear building in his body as he ransacked Tooru’s house and came up empty, over and over again— “Where were you? Why didn’t you answer my calls? What the fuck, Shittykawa? How the fuck are you just going to go off the grid and expect everyone to just be okay with it?” 

“What are you talking about?” asks Tooru, staring at him, the volleyball falling to the floor next to them with a soft thud. “What do you mean, go off the grid? I was only gone for an hour, and—”

“You didn’t answer my calls!” Hajime says again, shaking him, the burning in his body beginning to heat his face, his neck. “I didn’t know where the fuck you went! No one would tell me anything, and I thought you might have—the specialists—”

“I wasn’t with the specialists,” says Tooru, pushing at Hajime’s chest. “I was just doing an interview, it was for the news.” His eyes dart down to Hajime’s hands on his jersey, but he doesn’t tell Hajime to let go, and for some reason that makes Hajime release him quickly, stepping back, suddenly aware of just how close he was standing, close enough to feel the sweaty heat radiating off Tooru. Tooru wipes at his mouth. Hajime tries to swallow but it’s all so dry and he can barely breathe. 

He can’t say,  _ I had a fucking panic attack in the gym,  _ or,  _ I was worried about you, I was so fucking worried about you, do you even understand how much I care about you?  _ So instead, he snaps, “How am I supposed to keep an eye on you if you’re always running off and worrying everyone?” 

Tooru’s forehead creases, and his mouth pinches up. “You don’t have to keep an eye on me, Iwa-chan, I’m fine.” 

“I  _ do _ have to,” says Hajime. What the fuck? “What if the specialists—I never know what the fuck they’re going to do. I have to watch out for you, it’s my responsibility.” 

Tooru stares at him for a moment too long. Outside, crickets begin to hum, and the night air blows through Tooru’s messy hair as he says, “I’m not your  _ responsibility,  _ Hajime. Is that what you think?” 

“Of course that’s what I–”

“I’m not your responsibility!” Tooru says, raising his voice, although there’s nothing on his face, no anger, none of the fear and terror Hajime feels thundering through his own body. “Is that why you’ve been sticking around me all this time? Staying at practice with me and—and massaging my legs and all of that? Because I’m your responsibility?” 

Hajime opens his mouth but he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s supposed to say. Why the fuck is Tooru mad about this? Doesn’t everyone  _ expect  _ Hajime to take care of Tooru? That’s Hajime’s job, everyone knows they can rely on Hajime to keep Tooru safe. Of course that’s not the only reason Hajime does it, but how is he supposed to explain that he can’t imagine his life without Tooru at the center, that he’d rather spend ten long grueling hours of sleeplessness with Tooru than five minutes without him, that he’s being greedy with the touching, that if Tooru knew what Hajime really thinks about when he gets to slide his hands up Tooru’s thighs—

“Get out,” says Tooru, and Hajime stares at him, jaw still hanging open. Tooru’s face is still impassive but it’s a harder expression now. 

If not for the meds, Hajime thinks, Tooru would be furious, and his stomach clenches even tighter than it was before. 

“Don’t tell me what to—”

“Get out, Hajime,” Tooru interrupts. Hajime fists his hands, and he wants to start shouting again, he’s so worried about Tooru that he thinks he’s going to puke, but he forces it back with difficulty. 

No matter how much Hajime shouts, Tooru won’t shout back. They can’t get anywhere. 

“Fine,” he says. But before he leaves he bends down and grabs the volleyball from the floor, stalking through the dark house blindly. “Don’t practice alone, dumbass,” he says, his voice too loud in the quiet house, the panic still pricking at the corners of his dry eyes. “It’s dangerous.”

Tooru doesn’t answer, which makes Hajime feel sicker and worse than anything he could have said. 

* * *

The practice match against Karasuno is disastrous. 

Tooru and Hajime are horribly out of sync, all of the tosses and spikes slightly off, and Tooru won’t look at Hajime during time-outs to tell him what’s wrong. Hajime keeps watching him, heart stuck painfully against his ribcage, waiting for Tooru’s nod that means the next toss will be higher, but Tooru always seems occupied with their teammates, or distracted by Karasuno. 

The problem is, they were prepared for Kageyama, but not for the tiny orange wing-spiker that comes blurring onto the court out of nowhere. Hajime barely remembers seeing Hinata Shouyou on Tooru’s late-night game replays, but somehow he’s here now, whipping out a quick attack that flies right over Hajime’s head. It’s a little pathetic how small Hinata is—Hajime almost mistakes him for a middle-schooler—but the pity disappears quickly. Hinata and Kageyama have something going on, some kind of telepathic tossing, and the more smoothly they work together, the more Hajime and Tooru fumble, and the starker the difference becomes. 

It’s a miserable loss. 

Kyoutani storms right out of the gym without shaking hands with Karasuno, and for the first time ever, Hajime wishes he could join in on Kyoutani’s bitch fit. As they head off the court, Kindachi looks on the brink of tears, and Hajime smacks his shoulder half-heartedly, trying to remind himself that he’s dependable, the rock of the team, but it’s hard when he’s stuck staring at Tooru’s back. Tooru still won’t turn around to look at Hajime. He’s watching Karasuno, the way Suga rounds up his children, shouting, and the way Hinata jumps on Kagayama’s back, pounding excited little fists at Kageyama’s shoulders. 

Hajime’s stomach twists. He doesn’t want to look at Kageyama. It’s even worse the way Tooru seems to be unable—or unwilling—to look away. 

Hajime wants to go to him, put his hand on Tooru’s arm and say they’ll win next time. But he stays by the bench, listening to Kindachi’s quiet sniffling. He’s not sure if Tooru wants Hajime to comfort him anymore, if Tooru will think Hajime’s just doing it as his responsibility to the team. It’s all so tangled up in his head. Hajime needs to apologize for the way he overreacted last night, for his insane overprotectiveness, but he doesn’t have the words to explain the paralyzing fear of thinking Tooru’s in danger. Hajime can’t just turn off his overprotectiveness. He’s spent his whole life operating on the principle  _ “take care of Tooru. _ ”

“Iwaizumi,” says Coach, and Hajime stands immediately, lowering his water bottle. Coach looks stern, but he always looks stern, and Hajime does his best to meet his eyes. “Don’t let the loss get to your head. I shouldn’t have let you two play today. You need more rest, and I expect you to take that seriously from here on out.” 

“Yes, sir,” says Hajime. He has no idea what will happen now with the late-night practices, anyway. Maybe Tooru will no longer let him stay. Maybe Tooru will shut him out entirely, cutting Hajime off from volleyball, the last thing he has the emotional capacity to care about. Hajime has failed him again, but even that doesn’t make sense anymore, because Tooru doesn’t want Hajime to protect him, and if he doesn’t want Hajime to protect him, he certainly doesn’t want Hajime to love—

“Make sure Oikawa gets home safe,” says Coach, turning away, twisting the knife in Hajime’s chest deeper. Hajime can’t even manage another  _ yes, sir.  _

They pack up the bus. Yahaba keeps stopping in front of Hajime, blocking his way, like he’s going to say something, but he always decides not to, choosing instead to go herd Kyoutani into helping. Hajime wants to tell Yahaba it’s not worth it, but he doesn’t. If it weren’t for Yahaba, they wouldn’t be able to keep Kyoutani in line. That’s Yahaba’s team responsibility, and he’s not failing at it, not like Hajime. 

Hajime’s heading back through the Karasuno halls, heading for the bathroom before they leave, but when he rounds the corner he spots the tiny orange spiker hesitating outside the open bathroom door, his fists clasped excitedly in front of his chest. As Hajime gets closer, he sees Tooru holding the bathroom door open, gazing down at Hinata.

“Oh boy,” Hinata is saying, bouncing on his heels, “You’re the Grand King! Oh, wow, wow. You know, you know—you know, I didn’t expect you to be a real person, I thought Kageyama was making you up to scare me, and then—” 

_ “Hinata!”  _

Hajime hears Kageyama’s yell behind him, a blur of noise and motion in his peripheral, and then an elbow jams into Hajime’s side, knocking him sideways into the lockers with a loud crash. Hajime wheezes, doubling over, and Kageyama grabs Hinata by the back of his jersey and jerks him away from the doorway so hard that Hinata stumbles against his chest. 

“What did I tell you, idiot!” Kageyama shouts, and suddenly everything is loud, the rattling of the air conditioning thundering overhead, Hajime’s ears ringing. “Oikawa is dangerous, you can’t go near him!”

Hinata yelps, arms waving, adding to the chaos as he shouts over Kageyama, “I thought that was just a story you made up to scare—” 

“Idiot!” Kageyama shakes Hinata furiously, shoving him behind his own body, holding him away from the door as Tooru stares at them, lips parted, like he’s not processing what’s happening. “I  _ told  _ you! If you get too close to him, he’ll fuck you up! I gave you one rule! One!” 

“God! Sorry!” Hinata clutches himself, looking genuinely afraid now, either of Tooru or of Kageyama. Kageyama cuts his eyes to Hajime, who stares back wildly, and for a split second Kageyama seems to hesitate–he and Hajime had a good relationship once upon a time—but then he looks away, mouth flattening. He turns the full force of his glare on Tooru, and it’s so dark and deathly that Hajime expects Tooru to step back, but Tooru doesn’t. He only sways slightly, one hand still pressed to the door, his face blank. 

“Don’t—don’t ever go near Hinata again,” Kageyama says, voice lower than Hajime’s ever heard it. Kageyama is almost as tall as Tooru, just with worse posture, but he draws himself up to his full height now. “Or—or any of my other teammates. I don’t believe what the doctors say. I know you’re still dangerous. You’re just better at hiding it.” 

Tooru gazes at him, unblinking. Kageyama’s face screws up even darker, and Hajime realizes slowly that Kageyama doesn’t understand why Tooru is so expressionless. Kageyama must think Tooru is making fun of him, pretending to be above emotions, since Kageyama only ever knew the Tooru who struggled to keep his mood swings and outbursts in check. Didn’t the specialists send Kageyama and his family a nice little note in the mail after putting Tooru on the meds, informing them that the problem had been taken care of? Didn’t they let Kageyama know how deeply Tooru now has to pay for that last year of middle school?

Hajime feels rooted to the floor. 

“I–I’m serious,” Kageyama adds, his confidence finally faltering, his shoulders tightening. He stands there for another moment, glowering more hesitantly, before he finally steps away. “Come on, Hinata. You can pee when we get home.” 

“But!” 

Kageyama grabs Hinata’s collar again and forces him bodily down the hall, Hinata’s voice rising in complaint, and Hajime pushes himself off the lockers, standing up shakily. He means to step forward, to catch Tooru’s wrist before he lets the bathroom door swing shut—but Tooru is always stepping quickly around him, his hair bouncing smoothly on his forehead, his face a perfect mask.

“I’m going to walk home,” Tooru says. “Tell Coach not to wait.” 

“Tooru,” Hajime starts, but he doesn’t know what to say, there are too many things, so many things he’s been needing to say all day, too many things he’s never said about Kageyama—that Tooru hurt Kageyama, but he still doesn’t deserve this, he deserves the chance to grow from the mistakes. Hajime wants to say that Kageyama is wrong, that Tooru isn’t dangerous anymore. But Tooru slips around the corner before Hajime can force his words together, and Hajime sags against the lockers, bashing his head backward and squeezing his eyes shut. 

Tooru’s not  _ supposed _ to be dangerous anymore, but Hajime has a bad feeling in his gut, a very very bad feeling. The meds might protect other people from Tooru, but without Hajime, who’s going to protect Tooru from himself? 

* * *

Hajime goes home to Tooru’s house instead of his own. His mom has left dinner on the stove with a note that reads,  _ Please eat enough, my love,  _ and Hajime holds the note in his hands for a long time, allowing his eyes to blur with tears because no one is around. Tooru’s mom has been working late so often lately. Maybe this is why Tooru stays at the gym all night. Maybe it’s not just all volleyball and winning. Maybe he’s trying to fight off the emptiness of a lonely house and an even lonelier heart, locked away where no one can reach it. 

Hajime climbs the stairs and goes into Tooru’s dark bedroom, stepping over a clutter of clothes and DVDs, and gets into Tooru’s bed. He pulls the blankets over himself and stares up at the glow-in-the-dark stars and thinks about being seven again, when he and Tooru curled against each other in this very bed. Sometimes Tooru would touch him and Hajime would feel something he’d never felt before, a flash of insecurity, the beginnings of a sob, that particular excitement right before a holiday. Even then, Hajime’s heart was so full of Tooru, of his chubby baby cheeks, of his grubby hand in Hajime’s while they went bug hunting, of his finger pointing at things Hajime never noticed before.  _ Look at the nighttime people,  _ Tooru would say whenever they got to go out with his mom after dark, pointing at the evening shoppers.  _ Look at how their colors are all dark. They all look like the nighttime. We get to be nighttime people now, too, right, Haji?  _

Hajime closes his eyes and curls himself in Tooru’s blankets, pressing them to his face so he doesn’t have to feel his own tears. The smell of Tooru suffocates him, closing up his throat, and Hajime can’t see beyond tonight. It’s the same feeling he had over the summer, that this year is permanently incomplete, that the future simply can’t exist, at least not for him and Tooru. 

Hajime stays that way for a long time, unmoving, until through the thickness of his own head, he hears his phone ringing in his gym bag. 

Hajime rolls over blearily, reaching down over the side of the bed and groping his phone. It’s either his mom or Tooru, no one else ever calls him, so he thumbs it open without glancing at the contact, putting the phone to his ear and closing his eyes again. “Yeah?” 

Silence. 

Then Hajime hears Tooru’s labored breathing. 

Something’s wrong, he knows immediately, he can hear the way Tooru’s breaths keep cutting short, the soft hiss of pain before he whispers into the phone, “Hajime?” 

“What?” Hajime’s already sitting up, throwing the blankets off, his heart beginning to pound somewhere distant in his chest. Tooru’s in danger. Tooru’s in danger. Tooru is hurt somewhere and he’s in danger. Hajime has dreaded it for so long that it no longer seems real. “Where are you?” 

Tooru gives a choked noise. “I—the Karasuno—gym.” 

Hajime grabs his bag and then drops it again, shoving his feet blindly into his shoes. The Karasuno gym. The Karasuno gym. A million questions crowd into his head and he has to fight through all of them to voice the most important one— “Are you okay?” 

“I can’t—” Another choked-off breath— “get up.” 

Fuck, fuck, fuck, Hajime’s brain chants, still feeling disconnected from his body somehow, like this can’t be happening, not the scenario he’s imagined for so long. Tooru has hurt himself. He’s not supposed to be practicing unsupervised, especially not in another team’s gym, not when he was already off-balance and exhausted at the game today, not right after a confrontation when Kageyama called him a monster to his face—

“I’m coming,” he says, slamming Tooru’s bedroom door behind himself, throwing himself down the stairs so fast that his shoes slide on the steps, nearly chucking him head first onto the landing. “Don’t move. I’m coming. I’ll be right there.” 

He doesn’t mean to drop the call, but he’s clutching the phone in his hand while he runs, jumping down the front steps of Tooru’s house and breaking into a sprint down the dark, empty street, and at some point he must accidentally hang up, but he’s not sure he could talk while he runs. He’s not even sure he’s breathing. His lungs are screaming, his thighs burning, his calves stinging where the gravel flies up and bites his legs—and it’s all he can focus on, the physical pain, because he can’t—he can’t think. 

He can’t think about what he’s going to find at the gym. 

Maybe the train would be faster but it’s only one stop and Hajime can’t stop sprinting for anything, not until he throws himself up against the door to the Karasuno locker room, gasping. It’s unlocked–someone must have let Tooru inside—Suga most likely–but no one is with him now, and Hajiime shoves the door open with his whole weight and barrels inside. 

The locker room is well-lit and empty, Tooru’s gym bag thrown hastily on the ground, his warm-up jersey strewn across a bench. Hajime’s breath sticks in his throat when he stares at the bench, at for a moment he can’t see anything at all, except—

It’s one of Tooru’s plastic med cases, all the capsules popped open, empty. 

Hajime’s throat is dry. Tooru took his meds already this morning, before the match. He took extra—Hajime remembers, he took extra pills he wasn’t supposed to, because he knew Kageyama would be there, and if he accidentally touched Kageyama’s fingers across the net during a joust—

Hajime stares at the empty medication case with mounting horror. 

It’s like all the sound is gone from the air, like Hajime’s world has been muted as he lunges around the bench, grabbing for the door to the gym—the door they all filed through this morning, nervously cracking their knuckles–and he feels slow, too slow, as he whips around the corner to the court. The Karasuno gym is huge and sunshine-yellow and Hajime’s eyes hook on Tooru’s body, curled up on the opposite side of the net. 

Hajime thinks he shouts Tooru’s name but he still can’t hear anything, and maybe the shout is only in his own head, anyway—because Tooru doesn’t turn, doesn’t roll his head upward to meet Hajime’s eyes until Hajime is literally on top of him, grabbing his face with his hands, lifting Tooru’s chin. 

Tooru’s eyes are still open. They’re half-lidded, and his lips are tinged blue when he whispers, “Haji,” and Hajime screws up his face, hunching over Tooru’s body, pressing his forehead into Tooru’s chest as his body wracks with a single, excruciating silent sob. 

For a moment he thinks he can’t go on. 

But he breathes out and then instinct kicks in, the instinct that says,  _ “take care of Tooru,”  _ and Hajime lifts his head again and asks, “What hurts?” 

His voice is raspy like he hasn’t spoken in years. 

“I feel…” Tooru’s voice wavers. “I’m just...I’m so dizzy. I thought it would be okay. But everything started spinning, and I…” 

“Did you fall? Did you hurt something?” 

“Just…” Tooru breathes out sharply, a hissing sound. “I think I sprained...my knee. It’s not bad. But everything’s spinning, I just...I can’t stand up.” 

Hajime’s brain won’t allow him to shut down—he’s working on autopilot, smoothing Tooru’s hair out of his face, cradling his head. “How many pills did you take?” 

“Just tomorrow’s,” Tooru whispers, his eyes almost closing before he forces them open again. “I didn’t think it would be bad, I just...I wasn’t thinking, I just...I thought I should take more. I thought...Tobio must have been able to feel something, still.” 

“He can’t feel anything,” Hajime says, and it comes out harsher than he means. “There’s nothing to feel, Tooru. Kageyama just wanted to get under your skin.” 

His brain keeps running diagnostics, checking Tooru’s limbs for new bruises–there’s one on his upper arm that wasn’t there earlier, and his knee is red and swelling, and his fingernails are tinged the lightest blue color. Hajime breathes in and out. Two doses isn’t the end of the world. It’s not like Tooru is going to die of an overdose, but the meds must have messed with his coordination, sent him spiraling when he tried to land a jump. 

“You need to go to the hospital,” he says, and Tooru shudders in his arms. 

“No hospitals,” he whispers, and it’s a plea, a broken plea that goes straight through Hajime’s heart, but the autopilot withstands it, bolstering Hajime up. He’s going to protect Tooru. He’s going to get him help. 

“You have to,” he says. “I’m calling your mom right now.”

“She’s away,” Tooru whispers. “I tried. After you hung up.” 

“Where is she?” 

“The city, I...I think. She’s not supposed to be back until the morning.” 

Hajime clenches his jaw. “Then I’m calling 119.” 

“Hajime—”

“Stop,” Hajime demands, shifting Tooru’s head to one arm, holding him in the crook of his elbow while he thumbs his phone open again. “I’m not going to leave you, okay? I won’t let them take you away from me. I’m going to be there the whole time.” 

Tooru squeezes his eyes shut, turning his head into Hajime’s arm, still trembling a little, likely both from fear and the meds overloading his body. Hajime dials the emergency line, the heartrate in his chest finally beginning to slow, just a little, although his ears are still ringing. He presses his mouth quickly and firmly to Tooru’s forehead, the only way he knows to comfort him, as the woman on the other end says, “119, what is your emergency?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: some physical aggression, mentions of overdose 
> 
> i FORGOT how feral hajime is in this chapter... i almost edited some of it out, but then i decided to keep it for the sake of his character growth. lmao this chapter really highlights how many issues they both have though.
> 
> this is the end of part 2 so part 3 will begin next chapter! haha i think part 3 is longer than parts 1 and 2 put together because the story was never meant to this long, but i hope you will enjoy :)


	9. Chapter 9

**part 3**

**unsung**

* * *

Hajime thinks he will always remember the way Tooru looks on the stretcher, the way he looks in the ambulance, pale and ghostly, a faint new bruise blooming on his neck where Hajime held his head upright. He remembers the flashing lights, the unshaved beard of the ambulance doctor, the cold sweat on his own hands while Hajime fumbled with his phone, but he doesn’t remember phoning Tooru’s mom, explaining what happened, explaining where they are. He doesn’t remember leaving the ambulance and walking through the hospital. He doesn’t remember any sounds. 

One of the doctors, an older woman, holds onto Hajime’s arm for several minutes at one point, calming him, and it’s surreal, that a doctor is behaving as if she’s on Hajime’s side, that she’s aligned with  _ “take care of Tooru”  _ instead of against it. He feels mute, but he nods along the whole time she’s comforting him, and when she asks him to list Tooru’s medications, Hajime doesn’t think he can do it until his mouth moves, reciting the names. 

They don’t pump Tooru’s stomach. They give him another medication instead, to help contradict the effects. It makes Hajime nervous, the idea of them putting something else into Tooru’s body, but the doctor stays near him, assuring him it will be okay, it will all be okay. 

It’s midnight before Tooru’s mother shows up, panicked and hysterical, and the nurses move Hajime out into the waiting area while Tooru’s mom has her moment with her son. Hajime retreats to one of the chairs, sinking into the cushioned seat, everything still ringing around him, something numb and cottony stuffed into his head. It’s the shock, he thinks, and when it goes away maybe he’ll cry again, but he thanks small mercies that at least he’s not crying right now. People who know the two of them always think that Tooru is the crier, but he’s not, not when it comes to serious things. It’s Hajime. 

He spends a while texting Hanamaki and Matsukawa, letting them know what happened, and at the last minute he thinks to text Suga, too, and thirty seconds later Suga calls him, anxiety attack in full swing, saying about a million words into Hajime’s ear before he can get a single sentence out. “Oh my god oh my god oh my god” make up a good portion of the words, and then, “I’m such an enabler! I’m so sorry, I’m a horrible friend, Daichi is always telling me I’m an enabler, I should never have let Oikawa into the gym, he just said he wanted to practice, and oh my god, I’ve been giving him my meds too, his grades were slipping, I thought I was helping, oh my god, oh my god.” 

Hajime gets the sense that Suga is the kind of person who says yes to things without thinking first. If he’s an enabler, though, so is Hajime. “They said he’s going to be okay,” he interrupts the moment that Suga takes a breath. “They have to do an X-ray of his knee still, but it’s not broken. They said he’s okay.” 

“Oh, thank god,” says Suga. “Thank god.” 

It takes several more minutes before Hajime manages to end the call, and then Tooru’s mom is walking toward him, rubbing her eyes. She hugs Hajime for a long time when she sits down, her tears soaking through his shirt, and Hajime holds onto her as she whispers thanks. “You saved him,” she says, and Hajime doesn’t think that’s necessarily true, but it helps to ground him anyway, and he nods. “Oh my god, Hajime. You’re the best thing that ever happened to my son, do you know that? The best person we could ever ask for.” 

“He’s going to be okay,” Hajiime says, because he doesn’t know what else to say, and she nods, wiping at her face. 

They have to wait another hour before the doctor comes out, removing her medical mask so Hajime can see the smooth skin of her face, and he’s never been so relieved to see anyone’s face. “Oikawa-san,” she says, and nods at Hajime. “We’re going to keep him here overnight to monitor his breathing, but he should be alright in the morning. He’s sleeping now.” 

“Oh, thank god,” Tooru’s mom says. “Thank you. Thank you.” 

The doctor smiles, eyes dropping to her clipboard like she’s shy about taking the praise, just like Hajime. “His knee is sprained. He’ll need to stay off it for at least two weeks.” 

“Yes,” Tooru’s mom says, “of course. Of course. Thank you.” 

“There’s something else, Oikawa-san.” 

Tooru’s mother squeezes Hajime’s arm, then nods. “Is he alright?” 

The doctor tucks her hair behind her ear, still looking at the clipboard. “Your son appears to be under the influence of a variety of benzodiazepines,” she says. “There’s nothing in his medical records to suggest that he needs to be on this kind of medication, and frankly, it’s extremely dangerous for someone his age. Are you aware of this?” 

“Oh,” says Tooru’s mother, sounding confused, smoothing her own hair back. “Well—yes. He has other doctors, they fill the prescription for us.” 

The doctor shakes her head, flipping over the papers on her clipboard. “I don’t know who your primary medical care provider is, Oikawa-san,” she says. “But your son shouldn’t be taking any of these medications. They’re extremely addictive and damaging to his mental state. I recommend that we begin to decrease his dosage immediately. We’ll do it gradually, of course, to ease the withdrawal symptoms.”

“Oh,” says Tooru’s mother again, still sounding bewildered. “Well, I guess—well. Do you really think that’s the correct course of action?” 

“With all due respect, Oikawa-san, I believe it’s the  _ only  _ course of action. Continuing on medication to this degree will have irreversible effects on your son’s health.” 

Hajime stares at the doctor’s face, and around him the sounds of the hospital begin to bleed back into reality, the clattering of stretcher wheels, the shouting of a nurse down a hallway, the crying of a baby. He feels his pulse pick up again as Tooru’s mother says, “Well—I mean, whatever you think is best, I—I’m only trying to do what the doctors think is best.” 

“Of course, Oikawa-san,” says the doctor, and when she bends over her clipboard against, scribbling again, Hajime turns to look at Tooru’s mother, something beginning to burn in his chest. 

“They’re taking him off the meds,” he says, and it’s still tinged with the same surrealness of this whole night, but there’s something more real about these words, something hard and tangible and powerful, something building behind his eyes. They’re taking Tooru off the meds. They’re taking Tooru off the meds. They’re taking Tooru off the meds, the doctors are overriding his specialists, they’re not going to drug him up anymore, they’re going to allow Tooru to  _ feel  _ again. 

Tooru’s mother puts her hand on his arm, and all she whispers is, “I know,” in this shaky little voice, like she’s fighting off another wave of sobs, but Hajime—Hajime hears a whole world of things.

* * *

There are new rules now. 

Tooru’s hands are shaky and his forehead is beaded with sweat, and his eyes are closed as he rests his cheek on the edge of the toilet bowl, where he’s been dry-heaving for the past twenty minutes. Hajime refills his alien mug with tap water, sitting back down next to him, and Tooru takes it in both hands and mumbles thanks. 

The new rules dictate that Tooru take fewer and fewer pills each day, and even though it’s only day three, the withdrawal has already set in. Tooru’s a trembling mess, and Hajime has the lights in the bathroom dimmed down because Tooru has been whining that the brightness hurts his eyes. 

The new symptoms are bad, but when Tooru hands the empty mug back to Hajime, he sighs out an exaggerated, raspy sigh that sounds more genuine than any sound he’s made in the last six months, and the ice around Hajime’s heart chips away a little more. 

“I’m going to be sick for the rest of my life,” Tooru moans, eyelashes fluttering closed again, against his flushed cheeks, and Hajime has to resist the urge to smooth his hair back. “You’re going to have to drop out of school to become my caregiver, Iwa-chan.” 

“Like hell I’ll give up my education for you.” 

“You’re dumb anyway,” Tooru whines, and Hajime kicks at his heels, his socks sliding across the cool tile floor. “Primates can’t learn to read. They’ve done studies about that.” 

“I’ll break your neck,” Hajime says. “Then we’ll see who can read.” 

“So violent, Iwa-chan,” Tooru says, kicking back lazily. He’s wearing these dumb glow-in-the-dark  _ Lost in Space  _ socks that he would never wear outside the house, and he leaves his toes resting against Hajime’s ankle, and Hajime has to swallow hard through his dry throat. 

The biomagnetic field is coming back to life, Hajime can feel it in the air—the sense of constant, nearly unnoticeable vibrations whenever Hajime sits too close to Tooru. He hasn’t been able to tell what Tooru’s feeling yet, although he’s been straining all his senses a little desperately, but now—with Tooru’s foot touching his leg—he feels something almost foreign. It’s exhaustion, but underneath is trapped a kind of warmth, buzzing like Tooru would be excited if he only had the energy. 

Hajime tries to swallow again, and when he can’t, he stands up and refills the mug. 

* * *

The specialists visit the Oikawas’ house that Friday, and Hajime and Tooru hole up in Tooru’s bedroom, listening like children at the crack in the door, as the specialists argue with Tooru’s mother. Hajime can hear the man’s voice rising occasionally, saying words like, “liability” and “protocol,” words that make it sound like they’re lawyers arguing about a product, something they’ve patented. Hajime is afraid, and he can feel Tooru’s fear too, staticky in the air, heavy on Hajime’s tongue. 

He still can’t quite believe that he can feel the biomagnetism again. It’s duller than last year, but every day it increases. 

Tooru tips forward, pressing his forehead to the door. “Why can’t they quiet down,” he says petulantly, as if they aren’t eavesdropping on purpose. “My head hurts.” 

“You wanna sneak out the window to my house?” 

Tooru hesitates, then shakes his head. “I don’t want to leave my mom alone.” 

Hajime nods. Downstairs, he can hear Tooru’s mom’s voice break as she cries, “He could have  _ died!”  _ and Tooru winces, a little crack going through the rhythm of his static. Hajime wants to reach out and touch him, but he’s been avoiding too much intentional touch. He’s not sure what their new boundaries are, if there are new rules about touching, too. 

“How do you feel?” Hajime says awkwardly, to distract Tooru from his mom’s sobs. If she caves to the specialists—but Hajime can’t allow his mind to go down that road. “If you throw up on the floor, you’re cleaning it up. I’m not your nurse.” 

“Rude, Iwa-chan,” says Tooru, lifting his head. “I’m not a baby! I know to go to the toilet if I feel sick.” 

“Do you?” asks Hajime, still awkward—caring about Tooru out loud is still something he stumbles over. “Feel sick, I mean.” 

“I feel awful,” says Tooru, in a pitiful voice he might use to say,  _ Woe is me!  _ He tucks his hands between his thighs, and Hajime frowns. Tooru will whine all day, but then he goes around hiding his hand tremors from Hajime, trying to cover up any sign of actual weakness. 

“Let me see your hands,” Hajime says, and Tooru makes a face, hunching into himself to protect his hands. 

“Are you trying to violate me?” 

“It’s just your hands,” Hajime snaps, the back of his neck going warm. “What are you, a blushing virgin? Just let me see them.” 

Tooru pouts but holds out his hands, which are trembling steadily, and when Hajime takes his wrists in his fingers, he can feel Tooru’s racing pulse. It’s frighteningly odd, Hajime thinks, turning over his hands and staring at the familiar callouses, the lines of Tooru’s palms—Tooru is like a junkie coming off a dangerous high, with the shaky hands of an addict, and he feels so delicate, even though his hands are his most powerful weapon on the court. Those people who cheer for Tooru in the stands, the university scouts, the news anchors who hold microphones in his face—they see a different Tooru, a golden boy, an unstoppable athlete. Hajime sees that Tooru, too, and the chubby-faced baby he used to be, the boy with the corny sci-fi obsession, the asshole who comments “ugh not the caption I chose” on his friends’ Instagram posts, and none of those Toorus are the Tooru with the shaky hands, yet somehow they all are. 

“Does it hurt?” he asks, rubbing Tooru’s fingers, resolutely trying not to think about all the intentional touching. He can feel Tooru’s fear burning through his palms, the special kind of chilly fear reserved for the specialists. 

“Kind of,” says Tooru, reluctant. “But it’s alright. I’ll still be able to play once my knee heals. The doctor says two more weeks, but I can probably get back out there in one-and-a-half, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t think,” says Hajime harshly. “You’re going to kill yourself, idiot.”

“It’s just a sprain,” Tooru whines, but he doesn’t sound like his heart is in it, more that he’s playing up the dramatics to distract himself from what’s going on downstairs. 

“How long are you on the meds for?” 

Tooru is quiet for a moment, wiggling his fingers, and Hajime begins to rolls his knuckles with his thumbs. “The doctor said it would take a couple months to wean me off of them,” he says finally. “How much can you...how much can you feel?” 

The fear shifts slightly, the frequency picking up into something more like his old anxiety, his insecurity. The familiarity of the sensation closes up Hajime’s throat, and for a moment he goes still, gazing at Tooru’s hands. He can feel  _ Tooru,  _ the same Tooru he grew up with, his Tooru, and it means—it means Tooru is feeling those things himself, his emotions slowly returning, filling up the empty crevices of his heart. 

“You just got nervous,” Hajime says, still staring at Tooru’s knuckles. “I felt that.” 

Tooru gives a sudden half-cough half-laugh, turning his face to tuck his chin into his shoulder, unable to cover his mouth with his hands. “I didn’t mean to psychoanalyze me, Iwa-chan!” he says. “That’s creepy. I hate when you do that.” 

Hajime can feel his smile without looking up, and a sudden wave of uncontrollable giddiness rolls from Tooru’s hands into Hajime’s body, a quick burst of feeling, knocking Hajime’s air from his lungs. His hands squeeze reflexively on Tooru’s hands, the warmth coursing through them, and it feels like the hit of a drug he hasn’t had in so long, it feels overwhelming, it feels  _ good.  _

Fuck. Fuck. It feels good. 

“Do that again,” he blurts, raising his eyes to Tooru’s face, and Tooru blinks in surprise. He tries to take his hands away, but Hajime holds on for dear life, and a touch of color comes into Tooru’s cheeks. 

“Wha—did you feel that, too? When I—” Tooru stumbles over the words. “I just felt—happy. Oh my god. That was...I felt…” 

He stares at Hajime, his eyes wide, and Hajime feels sick with desperation. He needs the specialists to leave, now. He needs to know that they aren’t putting Tooru back on the meds. He needs to know that Tooru will be allowed to feel this again. 

“I felt it too,” Hajime says, and Tooru shakes his head a little in disbelief, his eyes wide. 

In awe, voice cracking, he whispers, “I felt happy. Oh my god.” 

Hajime squeezes his hands, hard, and Tooru gives a small yelp, pulling away again, and this time Hajime allows it, trying to hide his disappointment. Tooru flexes his fingers and stares down at them before looking at Hajime again. 

“Did it hurt you?” 

“No,” says Hajime. It’s embarrassing, for some reason, but he says it anyway– “It felt good. I mean, it—it was kind of nice.” 

“Oh,” says Tooru, his voice strange, an odd ripple going through his biomagnetism, but before Hajime can attempt to dissect the feeling, there’s a loud slam downstairs, and they both jump. 

Hajime listens, afraid to take his eyes away from Tooru’s, both of them sitting in terrified silence before Hajime finally says, “I think they—left?” 

Tooru presses his ear to the door, and Hajime can feel his fear, but then Tooru nods. “I have to go to my mom.” 

Hajime opens the door for him and follows Tooru’s quick footsteps down the stairs. His mother is curled up in the corner of the couch, her face in her knees, but as soon as Tooru stumbles on the carpet, she scrambles up and throws her arms around him. “Baby,” she’s saying, crying into his shirt, “baby, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

Tooru hunches over her, his own face in her hair, and Hajime hangs back, lingering in the doorway. He doesn’t want to disrupt their moment. The odd posture Tooru adopts when he’s hugging his mom, like he’s trying to return to a time when he wasn’t so much taller, and the relief flooding through his biomagnetic field—it all feels overwhelmingly intimate, and Hajime has to press his face hard against the doorjamb because he’s afraid he’s going to start crying for the millionth time this year, except this time from pure, terrifying joy. 

* * *

The following Monday, Tooru is allowed to come back to school, although the new rules state that if he feels sick or faint, he has to go to the nurse right away. Hajime waits outside his door in the early morning, feeling the chilly November air biting at his cheeks and lifting his hair, and when Tooru comes hurrying down the front steps, he’s pulling on a pair of surgical gloves. 

“What are those for?” Hajime asks, staring at his hands. The gloves are a warm gray color, not the hideous blue of the specialists’ gloves, but Hajime doesn’t like them. Tooru just clicks his tongue, elbowing Hajime’s upper arm. 

“Compromise, Iwa-chan,” he says. “I can take them off during practice, don’t worry.” He spreads his hands out in front of them as they begin walking down the street. “I don’t think they ruin my charm, do you? Actually, I think they add to my mystique.” 

“They add to your weirdness, more like,” says Hajime. “One step closer to looking like a fluorescent alien, I guess.” 

“Such a big word, Iwa-chan,” says Tooru, clicking his tongue. “Have you been studying a dictionary or something? Is there someone you’re trying to impress?” 

Hajime punches him in the shoulder, glowering, and Tooru goes flailing sideways on the street, crying, “You’re such a  _ meanie!”  _ Hajime stuffs his hands into his jacket pockets, stalking off in front of Tooru, pretending not to feel Tooru’s biomagnetic field reverberating around him as Tooru races to catch up with him. 

Tooru’s frequency remains surprisingly calm on the walk to school, although he complains that his headache has returned, and Hajime can pick up on Tooru’s undercurrent of giddiness, anticipation. It’s not unlike how Hajime himself feels—the happiness is still delicate, but Tooru is coming back to school, and he’s bringing his biomagnetism with him. Robot-Tooru is fading, and in its place, Hajime is beginning to catch small, genuine smiles on Tooru’s face before he hides them away. It makes Hajime’s heart flutter, a sensation he tries to squash down. 

If Hajime was in love with an unhappy Tooru, a happy Tooru is going to be the end of him, but it’s definitely the best problem Hajime has had all year, comparatively. 

By the time they’ve reached the school gates, Hajime can feel Tooru’s nervousness picking up, but Tooru still gives a winning smile to the girls who wave him over. “Don’t worry,” Tooru says, “I’m alive!” 

“Unfortunately,” Hajime mutters, just loud enough for Tooru to hear, and somehow Tooru manages to kick him in the ankle below the girls’ line of sight, without his smile faltering for a second. 

The girls coo over Tooru’s knee injury and ask if he’ll still be playing in the match on Friday (no) and if he’s written the literature paper yet (yes). Just when Hajime is growing irritated with the interrogation, about to drag Tooru away, one of the girls pipes up, “Oikawa-kun, my cousin works for the local TV station, do you think I could give you her number? I think she would love to, um, get this story from you.” 

“Oh,” says Tooru, and Hajime can feel the surprise no matter how well Tooru’s expression masks it. Everyone can feel Tooru’s emotions now, Hajime isn’t special, but still—still. The shifts in Tooru’s frequency are doing funny things to Hajime’s heart that they never did before. “Yes, of course, Sumi-chan. Here, put it into my phone.” 

Hajime manages to pull Tooru away after that, claiming he needs to get to his locker before homeroom. Tooru spends ten minutes checking his hair in the stupid mirror he installed on the inside of Hajime’s locker door, and Hajime jabs at him the entire time, and it’s enough to make Hajime’s heart feel like it’s going to pound right out of his chest. The way Tooru squints at his own reflection, trying not to laugh at something especially mean Hajime just said—the little jumps in his frequency—it makes Hajime feel so overwhelmed, so full. He keeps wanting to grab Tooru’s collar and yank Tooru’s face toward his own. He has to punch the locker door with the side of his fist at one point, just to release the nervous energy, and Tooru laughs and says, “Iwa-chan, don’t be such a delinquent,” and it’s all—it’s like—

Hajime doesn’t know if his body can handle happy Tooru. Hajime’s going to end up kissing him. 

“Oikawa!” 

It’s Hanamaki’s voice, and Tooru’s frequency leaps again, excited, which is about the cutest thing Hajime can imagine, and they both turn to see Hanamaki and Matsukawa hurrying down the hallway. Hanamaki slaps Tooru on the shoulder, grinning, and Matsukawa fist-bumps him, and it feels like a whole reunion, like their little family has finally been put back together. 

“Holy shit,” says Hanamaki. “I can feel your feelings again, dude, this is crazy.”

“Don’t be such a voyeur, Makki,” says Tooru. “Or at least keep your voyeurism private, you’re hurting Iwa-chan’s innocence.” 

“If I’m a voyeur then it implies that your feelings are sexual,” Hanamaki begins, and Hajime flicks Tooru’s head for revenge, and then Matsukawa interrupts, 

“Hanamaki has been telling everyone you’re dead.” 

Tooru’s mouth drops open. “Makki!” he cries in horror. 

“What!” says Hanamaki. “It’s a good rumor, it will get you loads of attention now that you’ve turned up not actually dead.” 

Tooru huffs out a breath, slamming Hajime’s locker door shut, even though Hajime still needs to find his calculator under the piles of papers stuffed inside. “Well, did you at least make me die in a romantic way?” 

“What? No,” says Hanamaki. “Fuck that, I said you decided to set the Karasuno gym on fire, but before you could get out, the flames consumed—”

“You made me a criminal!” 

“I thought it was realistic!” says Hanamaki. 

“You think I would realistically commit arson?” 

“Well, if it was against Karasuno...” begins Matsukawa, and Tooru gasps again. 

“Not you too, Mattsun!” 

“I’m not saying I would believe it,” says Matsukawa, holding up his hands. “Everyone knows not to believe Hanamaki’s bullshit, you don’t need to worry. No one actually thinks you committed arson.”

Tooru crosses his arms, sticking out his tongue at Hanamaki. 

“What actually happened?” asks Matsukawa. “I mean, I know you sprained your knee, but why the sudden, uh—” He gestures vaguely to the air, like he’s forgotten the words for Tooru’s biomagnetic field, like he feels disoriented just standing near him again. “Did you go off your meds?” 

“Iwa-chan said he told you guys,” says Tooru, giving Hajime a look. “The doctors decided I don’t need them anymore! I’m all better now.” 

Matsukawa and Hanamaki exchange a glance. Tooru’s explanation is so flimsy that they both must decide not to push. Hanamaki just shoves at Tooru’s shoulder again and says, “That’s great, dude. Does it feel weird? Can you feel everything again, like, times ten?” 

“Not yet,” says Tooru. “I mean, they’re still easing me off, I’ll still be taking pills for another month or so.” He glances up and down the hall—people are beginning to head to their homerooms, but Hajime understands why Tooru doesn’t want to leave yet. This must feel like the first time Tooru gets to really  _ be  _ with his friends in almost a year. “But it’s kind of overwhelming. Like even the lights—the noise—” He flutters his fingers around his head. 

Hanamaki nods. Matsukawa says, “We missed you at practice. Wait until you see what Mad Dog did to the net while you were away. I think Yahaba is really going to murder him this time.” 

“Makki will make sure everyone knows as soon as that happens,” Tooru says wryly, and Hanamaki chuckles, shrugging like he knows it’s true, and then the warning bell rings, and Hajime nudges Tooru away from his locker. 

“C’mon, homeroom,” he says. Hanamaki and Matsukawa back away reluctantly, waving. 

“Lunch in the clubroom?” Hanamaki says, and Hajime gives him a thumbs-up, pulling Tooru off toward their homeroom. Even touching him on the arm, through the uniform sweater he’s wearing, makes Hajime feel like he’s hyped up on too much caffeine, ready to run a mile or throw a hundred-pound barbell or shove Tooru against the wall with his knee wedged between Tooru’s thighs and his mouth on his neck. 

Hajime takes a moment to breathe and try to reorient himself. He’s going to be surrounded by Tooru’s biomagnetism all the time now; he needs to get a fucking grip. 

It’s not until they reach homeroom that he realizes that Tooru made him forget his goddamn calculator in his locker. 

  
  


* * *

Tooru has to sit on the bench for the next three weeks, waiting for his knee to heal, but he still comes to practice every day, except when he’s puking his guts out in the locker room bathrooms, sick from the withdrawal. Sometimes when Hajime’s leaping up for a spike, he can feel Tooru’s impatience shoot through the gym, impatience to be the one setting for him, but instead of throwing Hajime off balance, it powers his arm, gives him that extra burst of energy to slam the ball into the sweet spot on the opposite side of the court. 

It finally feels like  _ playing  _ again, instead of the grueling work it was during those late-night practices, and Hajime feels invigorated, like he’s come alive again. This year, the year he couldn’t imagine living—it’s begun anew. They’ve been given another chance, him and Tooru. 

Hajime and Tooru, Tooru and Hajime.

Tooru is back in team huddles, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of their plays with a kind of erratic intensity that has returned with the biomagnetism, hyperfixating not just on volleyball but also on the strangest things, like how Kyoutani dyes his hair (“With a  _ paintbrush? _ ”) and Matsukawa’s new maybe-girlfriend and the book their literature class is reading. He and Hanamaki start watching a new reality show on the bus to practice matches, and this time they rope Hajime into it, too, which Hajime pretends to be grudging about—he can’t have people knowing he believes in love, it’ll ruin his reputation. 

But, god, Tooru makes it hard.

* * *

Tooru’s started backing off of touching the team again, flinching away from Yahaba especially, who has never liked the feeling of the biomagnetism, but for some reason he and Hajime don’t stop touching. Neither of them say it, but Hajime thinks that he and Tooru are equally terrified of returning to a cold time when they sat on opposite sides of his bedroom to do homework, when they didn’t have those quiet intimate nights of massages on Tooru’s couch. When Hajime touches Tooru’s back after practice, his palm flat against Tooru’s shoulderbrades, he feels the shiver that goes through Tooru’s body, the thrill that races up Hajiime’s arm, and it’s like a silent go-ahead, a promise. They can continue to touch for another day. 

The touching feels good. It feels intoxicatingly good, quite literally addicting—when Hajime ices Tooru’s knee one night, he drags out the affair, lingering with his thumbs rubbing circles into Tooru’s bone. The way Tooru’s soft, relaxed contentment bleeds directly into Hajime’s bloodstream makes him feel drunk and liquified. It’s a dangerous feeling, but it’s so goddamn  _ good,  _ and Hajime wants it, he wants it all the time, he’s begun counting the days until Tooru can get back on the court because it means he can start massaging his body again, kneading into the muscle and eliciting more emotions, the startle of pain, the burn of relief, the aching gladness of touching, of being allowed to touch each other. 

But there’s something else, too, and it’s the something else that is really making Hajime think he’s gone crazy. 

There’s a new emotion in Tooru’s biomagnetic field, an emotion that Hajime’s struggling to place, one that—embarrassingly—seems to be associated with Hajime. It happens like this: Hajime will show up to practice late (another detention for inappropriate language) and when he enters the gym, he’ll feel Tooru’s biomagnetism, settled and calm as he talks to Yahaba. Tooru’s moving his hands around, illustrating a play, and Yahaba is nodding seriously, a safe distance away (Hajime has discovered it’s not just Tooru; Yahaba just doesn’t like to be touched, it’s not personal). 

And then Hajime will raise his voice, say, “Oi, Shittykawa,” and Tooru will jump, glancing over his shoulder, and this  _ feeling _ will flood rapidly into his biomagnetic field: a bright burst of delight, a vibrating eagerness so warm it’s almost hot, something too happy to be nervousness, too excited to be relief, something that makes Hajime’s whole body flush as Tooru gives his most annoying grin, tongue pushing against his teeth. 

It’s intense, it’s really fucking intense and Hajime knows it wasn’t there before the medication. He would have remembered it. Sure, Tooru’s always lit up a little when Hajime entered rooms—even Hajime’s not dumb enough to miss that—but this is something else entirely, like something Tooru’s manufactured just to embarrass Hajime, just to fluster him. Everyone else must feel it, too, and Hajime wants to die, but he also doesn’t ever want to stop feeling it. He wants more. He wants to feel Tooru wrap his strong arms around Hajime’s broad body and put his pretty mouth against Hajime’s sweaty skin and press their warm chests together so that this exhilarating feeling can bleed directly from Tooru’s fucking heart into Hajime’s, and he thinks it would finally kill him, eyes rolling back into his head, but god, it would be ecstasy. 

By the last couple days of Tooru’s bench isolation, when he’s down to a couple pills a day, Hajime feels like he’s in a constant state of blushing, tripping over a stray volleyball when Tooru calls, “Good spike, Iwa-chan!” and the—the new emotion, whatever the fuck it is, surges like a burst of affection. Hajime rubs his water bottle on his face, like he can scrub away the heat on his cheeks, and as soon as Tooru’s distracted, Hajime hurries over to where Hanamaki and Matsukawa are stretching. 

He’s not sure how to ask it, rolling the question around in his mouth until it sounds fucking idiotic every way he can think to phrase it, the blush on his neck only building as Hanamaki and Matsukawa chatter obliviously about their math teacher. Finally he thinks,  _ fuck it,  _ Hanamaki and Matsukawa have no respect for him to begin with, so he just says, “Do you guys feel that?” 

“It’s fucking hot in here,” Hanamaki agrees, rolling his water bottle around. Hajime throws his own water bottle at Hanamaki’s chest. 

“Not that, you dumbass,” he says. “In Oikawa’s biomagnetism, do you feel—does it change when, like–” God, this is so embarrassing, he needs to remember to kill Tooru later. “When I get to practice?” 

  
There’s a pause. Matsukawa glances at Hanamaki, and Hanamaki says, “Oh, that,” already grinning in a way Hajime doesn’t like. “That’s his  _ Iwa-chan  _ emotion.” 

Matsukawa snickers, flicking Hanamaki’s shoulder, but he doesn’t deny it, and Hajime gives them both the dirtiest glare he can muster. 

“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just what I said,” says Hanamaki. “It’s just the emotion he gets around you, it’s always been there. I think he thinks,  _ ah yes, Iwa-chan is here,  _ and gets all turned-on thinking about how to irritate you.” 

Hajime thinks his face is going to go up in flames, his hands fisting on his thighs so tightly it hurts. “What the fuck’s  _ that  _ supposed to mean?”

Hanamaki snickers, rolling Hajime’s water bottle across the gym floor toward him. “Relax,” he says. “I’m just fucking with you. He’s just happy to see you. Like I said, it’s always been like that.”

Hajime tries to swallow casually, but it probably looks like a gulp, and he glares even harder to make up for it, pissed off at himself and at Hanamaki for being such a fuckwad. He turns the glare on Matsukawa, but Matsukawa just shrugs. 

“Hanamaki’s right, we’re used to it. Did you seriously not notice until now?” 

“It’s stronger now,” Hajime grits out, glaring at the floor instead, grabbing his water bottle. It’s empty, because even his water has decided to betray him, but he still presses the cool plastic to his neck, trying to force the blush to reside. 

“Honestly, Iwaizumi, I feel like Oikawa might have a little bit of a crush on you,” says Matsukawa sincerely, and Hajime nearly chokes on his own tongue. 

Hanamaki starts snickering again, and after a second Matsukawa joins in, and Hajime throws his water bottle back onto the floor, scrambling to his feet and stomping away. They’re just teasing him, just fucking around, and Hajime isn’t here for it, okay, he’s the one being humiliated by the bright, happy feeling that Tooru is showcasing to the whole world when he spots Hajime in a room. Soon he’s going to go on TV and say something like,  _ “Oh, I have a special emotion for Iwa-chan, do you want to feel it!”  _ and then everyone who ever meets Hajime will know about it, about the way Tooru makes his body heat up. 

He refuses to think of it as the Iwa-chan emotion. He will  _ not  _ think of it as the Iwa-chan emotion. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so sorry for missing a week loves! we will have some fluff for a bit to make up for all the angst of past chapters but do not worry the drama isn't over :)


	10. Chapter 10

The Iwa-chan emotion reaches an all-time high on Friday. 

Coach has promised Tooru that he can get back on the court next week, and Hajime hangs back while Tooru follows their teammates into the locker room. Tooru’s emotions have been warm and affectionate all day, and Hajime needs a moment to breathe if he’s going to stop himself from grabbing Tooru’s waist and burying his face in the back of Tooru’s neck. When the gym is empty, Hajime walks over to Coach, rubbing his hands on the sides of his gym shorts. 

“Yes, Iwaizumi?” Coach doesn’t look up. He’s busy making marks on his clipboard, probably rearranging the lineup for next week’s practices. 

Hajime takes a breath and clasps his elbows in his hands. “I wanted to make, uh...a request. Uh, a suggestion.” 

Coach glances up, the barest hint of a smile touching his crows-feet wrinkles. “I’m listening.” 

“I think we should stop practicing against Karasuno, uh, just for now.” 

Coach waits a beat, but Hajime doesn’t know what else to add, and after a moment Coach lowers his clipboard. “Do you not consider them competition?” 

“It’s not that.” Hajime hesitates again. “It’s Kageyama, I think he...he has a bad reaction to Tooru’s biomagnetic field. We saw him right before Tooru—hurt himself.” 

“You know I don’t like you boys to bring personal rivalries onto the court,” says Coach, and Hajime thinks that’s it, that’s his answer, but then Coach goes back to his clipboard. “I’ll think about it. We can’t afford Oikawa getting injured again.” 

He turns away, and Hajime belatedly realizes he used Tooru’s given name again, and in front of their Coach. His face burns, but he stammers out a quick, “Thank you sir,” before he breaks for the locker room. Inside Tooru is talking to Matsukawa, and Hajime dumps his bag and gets changed in the corner, bracing himself for the moment Tooru’s frequency jumps again—and then Kunumi moves out of the way, zipping his coat, and the fucking _Iwa-chan feeling_ hits Hajime like a tsunami. Tooru has noticed him. 

It’s so fucking obvious. It’s so obvious that he hears Matsukawa snicker, and Hajime’s whole body burns, and he quickly shoves his jacket on. 

“Iwa-chan!” Tooru calls from the bench. “Are we still going to see that apocalypse movie tonight? Remember you agreed to go if I gave you back your three-in-one shampoo and body wash?” 

Hajime slams his locker door shut as Matsukawa chuckles again. “I didn’t agree to anything,” says Hajime grumpily. He’s sure his neck and face are horribly red. “You can’t just steal people’s belongings.” 

“But three-in-one shampoo is a crime, Iwa-chan,” says Tooru. “I had to protect you from being rightfully incarcerated.” 

Hajime glares at him. “Stealing is a crime, too.” 

“Iwa-chaaan,” Tooru whines, one of his legs tucked up on the bench, reaching his hands out and making grabby hands in Hajime’s direction. “Please? I promise it’ll be a good movie. I’ll even buy you popcorn.” 

“I’ll leave you lovebirds to it,” says Matsukawa, slinging his bag over his shoulder, and Hajime furiously gives him the finger, which Matsukawa cheerfully returns before leaving the locker room. The second he’s gone, Tooru leans forward and latches onto Hajime’s wrist, a hot flash up Hajime’s arm.

“Come on?” Tooru says. “It’ll be fun. You _promised.”_

“Stop whining,” Hajime says, shaking his arm like he’s trying to get Tooru off, but he’s not trying at all, and he hates himself for it. “Fine, I’ll go, but you’re paying.” 

“Iwa-chan wants to be spoiled,” Tooru says brightly, leaping up from the bench and letting go of Hajime’s arm. Hajime swings at him, but Tooru ducks out of the way with a scream and a laugh, leaping toward the door, and then all Hajime can do is follow him, stuffing his fists into his pockets and glowering at the back of Tooru’s head. It will look stupid if he crosses his arms huffily while they walk, but a childish part of Hajime is tempted to do it, anyway.

* * *

There’s nothing strange about the way Tooru acts as they walk to the movie theater—he’s just chattering about mundane things, waving his hands around—but Hajime still feels acutely aware of him, of the distance between them. The rush of warm, excited affection whenever Tooru sees him—it’s too much for Hajime’s heart to handle. Of course Tooru is an affectionate person, that’s never been a problem before, but it’s a problem now, because Hajime wants more, wants Tooru to hang onto his arm while they walk, wants Tooru to cuddle up to his side while they watch movies, wants Tooru to arch his back while Hajime’s massaging his legs and let Hajime touch more skin. Hajime wants, he wants, he wants, and he can’t have, because Tooru is his best friend, so he just tries to clamp it all down. 

It’s enough that Tooru is happy. 

And Tooru _is_ happy–Hajime can feel it vibrating in the air, everything warmer and brighter than it was when they used to walk this route in the dead air, absent of the biomagnetism. It’s beginning to snow, and even though the season’s different, Hajime is reminded of the time they went to see the alien crop circles. He remembers Tooru saying, _“I want to feel this.”_ He remembered the terrifying emptiness in Tooru’s voice. 

Hajime lets Tooru hold the door to the movie theater open for him, as Tooru says, “I think they’re really going to expand on the mechanics of the multiverse in this one!” and Hajime’s chest is so full that he thinks he might explode. 

* * *

Watching movies with Tooru is infinitely more interesting than watching them alone, because Tooru is a movie all on his own—the rise and fall of his emotions is more entertaining than the apocalypse plot, which Hajime gives up on trying to understand in the first fifteen minutes. Tooru likes this stuff, fictional worlds, he leans forward in his seat and gets invested, but Hajime doesn’t have the imagination for it. He just watches Tooru out of the corner of his eye, cataloguing every single one of Tooru’s emotions.

It’s impossible to avoid. Every time Tooru leans over to whisper something, even when he just glances at Hajime, the undercurrent of joy jumps up, like Tooru’s indescribably happy just to be here with _Hajime,_ at some shitty half-price movie theater. It makes Hajime’s body hot and a little tight, his throat aching with something too big for his body to hold. 

He forms a hypothesis by the closing credits. Tooru’s emotions have been repressed for so long that they’re in overdrive now—he hasn’t learned to regulate them again. The doctors mentioned that delirium might be a more severe withdrawal symptom. That’s what these emotions must be. Delirium. 

“What did you think, Iwa-chan?” asks Tooru as they head up the carpeted steps, hugging their bins of popcorn. Hajime tries to respond that it was confusing and there were too many references, but people are crowding together at the exit, bottlenecking in front and behind them, and Hajime feels the sudden hitch in Tooru’s frequency. 

Tooru’s afraid, and Hajime instinctively puts his arm around Tooru’s waist and yanks him closer, so they won’t touch anyone else. 

It’s a mistake. Tooru’s whole body is pressed in a hot, electric line against Hajime’s side, and Hajime feels his atoms jumble up with a mix of fear and elation, Tooru’s body vibrating against him. Hajime’s fingers dig into Tooru’s hip through his sweater, and Tooru takes a quick breath, a buzz of heat going through Hajime when he exhales. The people squeeze past on Hajime’s other side, and he holds Tooru even closer, trying to fight his traitorous flush, and he can’t think, his brain is full of all the places they’re touching, the way Tooru’s heat is pouring into his limbs, and oh god, oh god, it feels good, it feels good, it feels good. 

It’s a bad kind of good—Hajime closes his eyes and swallows hard, heat building in his stomach so hot he thinks he’s going to melt. His pants are too tight, and if this goes on, he’s going to get hard just from holding Tooru around the waist, just from coming in contact with Tooru’s oblivious affection for him, spreading like a blush all across Hajime’s body. 

God. 

The crowd pushes through the exit, a space yawning open, and Hajime hastily steps away from Tooru, dropping his arm. The distance feels wrong, and Hajime’s body immediately says, _Hold him again,_ but Hajime fights hard to clamp it down again. He’s not going to get a boner in the fucking movie theater, not over his best friend. He tries to breathe, to direct Tooru through the exit without letting him touch anyone else. 

When they get out into the lobby, Tooru’s breathing is a little fast, and his cheeks are pink. “Sorry,” he says right away. “I forgot about—about the crowds. I’m out of practice.” 

“It’s okay,” says Hajime. It _is_ okay, but Tooru looks ashamed, tugging on the fingers of his gray medical gloves in a way he thinks Hajime won’t notice. Hajime can feel the uncertainty hovering around him, like he thinks he’s fucked up somehow, so Hajime adds firmly, “You didn’t touch anyone, and even if you did, so what? It’s not like you’re angry, it’s not going to hurt them.” 

Tooru looks at him quickly. “It doesn’t hurt?”

“No,” says Hajime. “I told you this already.” His face is so hot, god. Why is Tooru making him say embarrassing things in the open air like this? “When you’re happy, it feels sort of nice. Like, warm.” 

“Oh,” says Tooru, and the uncertainty withdraws slowly, and Tooru gazes around the lobby, like he’s taking stock of all the people around them, mapping out their exit. 

Hajime imagines them living like this forever—never able to feel safe at crowded sports games, unable to get onto crowded trains—but he’ll do it, he’ll do all of it with Tooru, and he’ll do it gladly, if Tooru wants him to. 

“Can we get ice cream on the way home?” asks Tooru. 

“It’s cold out,” says Hajime, but Tooru turns to look at him with a pout. Hajime knows the pout is fake, because Tooru’s _Iwa-chan feeling_ is beginning to overpower his anxiety again, but Hajime is a masochist, apparently, because he says, “Fine. Let’s go.”

* * *

Tooru still has to visit the specialists, although he sees a regular doctor about his medication, too, and he tells Hajime that the specialists have changed tactics again. They’re no longer trying to repress the biomagnetic field. They’re back to trying to figure out the extent of it. 

“What do they do in the lab?” Hajime asks, awkwardly, one night when he’s working a knot out of Tooru’s shoulder. He hasn’t gotten used to the warm feeling like he hoped he would—if anything, it’s getting worse, heightening all of Hajime’s fantasies about running his hands through Tooru’s hair and cupping his face and sliding their wet mouths together. And, disgustingly, it makes him feel softer toward Tooru, like Tooru is showing this soft, affectionate side to Hajime and Hajime has to return the vulnerability somehow. 

Tooru draws his legs up his chest, rubbing his hands up his shins. His mood wavers, and Hajime thinks he doesn’t want to talk about the lab, but then Tooru says, “Well, they show me films sometimes.”

This isn’t what Hajime was expecting, and his hands pause on Tooru’s back. Tooru shifts against him, pressing back into Hajime’s fingers, and Hajime gazes down at the constellation of freckles on his shoulder. “Films of what?” 

“Like—” Tooru shifts again. “Are you sure you want to hear this, Iwa-chan? It’s kind of disturbing.” 

Hajime digs his stubby nails into Tooru’s skin, and Tooru hisses in pain. “What is it?” 

Tooru reaches up to rub at his shoulder, and his hand bumps Hajime’s, his fingers slender and pale against Hajime’s thicker, shorter ones, and Hajime has to swallow past the heat of Tooru’s hand touching his own. This is serious. It’s not the time to get turned on. 

“They’re more like simulations,” says Tooru after a minute. “They make me wear a headset. And then they play scenarios for me, to see how I’ll react to them, so they can study the effects on my biomagnetic field.”

“What kinds of scenarios?” asks Hajime, pressing his thumbs into Tooru’s tight muscle, but he already has a sinking feeling that he knows. 

“Well,” says Tooru, and pauses again. He tips his head to the side, his hair falling away from Hajime’s hands, and Hajime knows he’s stalling. His stomach sinks further. “Different things. A lot of them are about my mother, I don’t know why, they think I have some kind of Freudian problem because my dad isn't in the picture.” 

“What, is it, like—they show you videos of her dying, or something?”

Tooru’s frequency shudders a little, and Hajime bites the inside of his cheek, hard. 

“Sometimes,” Tooru says carefully. “I mean, sometimes they show videos to elicit positive emotions.” 

“But mostly not.”

“Mostly not,” Tooru agrees, and his frequency dips lower, something heavy in his voice. Hajime wants to end the conversation, he knows nothing good can be said about the specialists’ experiments, but he doesn’t say anything, just kneads into Tooru’s shoulder and wishes he could communicate through his own biomagnetic field, to let Tooru know that Hajime is here for him, that even though he can’t stop the specialists, he’ll be here every time when Tooru comes home. After a minute Tooru starts talking again. “They have simulations of Tobio-chan, too, to see if I’ll try to hurt him, and volleyball ones where I lose, things like that.” He pauses. “At first they showed me simulations of Sana, too. Really messed up stuff, I couldn’t...it was a lot. But then I guess my reactions weren’t good enough, because they switched to you.” 

Hajime feels cold, all over, even though Tooru’s body is warm. “They show you simulations of me?” 

Tooru nods, his hair scraping the back of his neck. “It’s bad,” he says, and his voice cracks a little, and he clears his throat. “It’s all bad stuff. Sometimes it’s just you getting hurt and I can’t help you. But it’s also...it’s also, it’s me hurting you.” 

Hajime grips his shoulders. He can feel Tooru’s biomagnetism beginning to dip even lower, into dangerous territory, and the cold is seeping into Hajime’s body, but it’s not painful, it’s only uncomfortable, and he’s not going to let go of Tooru. He squeezes instead, pressing his knees to Tooru’s back. 

“How are you hurting me?” he asks, but—

“Don’t make me say it,” Tooru says, his voice breaking again, a dull spasm of pain going through the biomagnetic field, thudding against Hajime’s head, and he closes his eyes and nods. 

“Okay,” he says, quiet, and he thinks he can feel Tooru crying, only a few tears before Tooru’s wiping his face, trying to collect himself. It’s the first time he’s felt Tooru cry since the meds, but it doesn’t feel like a victory; instead Hajime can taste the sick taste of tears on his own tongue. He doesn’t think the specialists are only doing this to measure the reactions of Tooru’s biomagnetic field. It’s darker than that. They want him to know that they think he’s a monster. They want him to feel like a monster, they want him to see firsthand just how much of a monster he could become. 

No one should ever have to see that. Hajime presses his chest to Tooru’s back, resting his forehead against Tooru’s shoulder and wrapping his arms around his body, and Tooru’s hands come up to clasp his arms, holding him there. 

  


* * *

Tooru’s face begins appearing more and more on the local TV stations, and when Tooru types his own name into the internet and shows Hajime, there are a lot of search results, all of them about _this_ Oikawa Tooru, articles written about him and video clips of his serves. Hajime rolls his eyes and makes some snarky comment about the fame going to Tooru’s head, which of course it has, but still, Hajime can’t push down the warm pride in his chest. 

By winter exams, Tooru’s off all the meds, even though he still throws up twice a week and his hands still tremble on his pen as he furiously scribbles on his cheat sheet. Hajime tries not to think too hard about the lab, about the medication, about the fact that this probably won’t be Tooru’s last medication-withdrawal cycle. A condition like his will always need some kind of treatment, but since no one knows what that treatment is yet, Tooru will always be a guinea pig. And maybe it will all be for nothing, as far as medical research goes; who knows if anyone else like Tooru even exists?

A couple of days after exams, Tooru shakes Hajime awake at some ungodly hour of the morning. 

“Mm,” Hajiime grumbles, burying his face into a pillow and realizes, in the slow dawning of the morning, that he fell asleep in Tooru’s bed again. This is bad. He’s not supposed to be sleeping over like this, every other night, it’s too much exposure to Tooru and his biomagnetism, stripped bare as Tooru does his skincare routine and changes into too-small pajamas and cuddles into the pillows next to Hajime. When Tooru gets sleepy he loses any remaining control over his emotions, and that’s when they really seep into Hajime’s heavy limbs, the sweet affection undeniable, soft and happy like the smile Tooru gives him before he falls asleep. 

It’s all so addicting. Hajime can’t stop, he can’t stop, he sleeps better and wakes up warmer next to Tooru and it’s like being wrapped in a cocoon of pure bliss, and he can’t stop. 

“Iwa-chaaan,” Tooru sing-songs, and Hajime buries his face deeper, willing Tooru to go away, but not really—Hajime doesn’t want Tooru to take his hot hand off Hajime’s arm, where he’s thumbing at the sleeve of Hajime’s t-shirt. “Get up. We’re going to brunch.” 

Hajime squeezes his eyes shut, lifting his head an inch only to slam it into the pillow, to display his irritation at this particular plan. 

“C’mon, Iwa,” says Tooru, dragging the blankets off his body. He smells good, like sleep, and that’s probably bad, that Hajime has slept in this bed so often that he associates sleep with the smell of Tooru’s body. “We have reservations, we can’t be late.” 

Hajime doesn’t move until Tooru yanks the pillow out from under his head, sending Hajime’s head flopping painfully against the mattress. Hajime pushes himself up on his elbows, glaring. “I don’t do brunch,” he says, his voice croaky and rough. “I’m not into that girly stuff.” 

Tooru huffs, shoving at his shoulder. God, his hand is so hot, like a fucking furnace, and it shouldn’t feel so fucking good. “You need to tone down your toxic masculinity, Iwa-chan, it’s ugly. Brunch is for everyone.”

“You always say I’m not pretty enough to come,” Hajime says. 

“Well,” says Tooru, frowning, his nose scrunching up. God. He’s too cute for this early in the morning, even though when Hajime glances at the wall clock, it’s almost ten-thirty. “Akaachan was supposed to come, but now he can’t because Bokuto is having an episode. So we have an extra spot.” 

“Okay, so I’m a replacement for Akaashi,” says Hajime. “Doesn’t make me want to go more.” 

“Stop being such a grump, Iwa-chan,” says Tooru impatiently, swinging his legs over Hajime to slide out of bed. He does it by putting one hand on Hajime’s thigh and one on the small of his back, dragging his ass over Hajime’s body, and Hajime screws up his face again and shoves it back into the pillow, trying to ignore the heat burning in all the places Tooru just touched. 

* * *

Tooru has him downstairs in the next thirty minutes, dressed haphazardly in one of Tooru’s thick sweaters and the same jeans he wore yesterday. Tooru messes with his hair in the camera of his phone while they wait for Suga to “come pick them up,” and Hajime doesn’t know why he’s so surprised when a van pulls in front of Tooru’s house and Tooru shoves his phone into his pocket. 

“Sugawara has a car?” Hajime asks, following Tooru out the door and into the snow, which crunches under his sneakers. It’s cold, and Hajime is secretly glad for Tooru’s warm gloved hand on the elbow of Hajime’s sweater. 

“I think it’s his mom’s,” says Tooru. “But he’s been driving it since last year. He’s a little older than us, I think he took an extra year in grade school.” 

Hajime isn’t sure whether or not to be surprised. He and Tooru didn’t turn eighteen until this last summer, and Suga seems smaller than them in more than just height. But in other ways it makes sense. Even though he’s a little chaotic, Suga is obviously smart—he notices things. 

The van is predictably cluttered, various coffee cups tossed under the seats, but heat blasts into Hajime’s face as soon as Tooru opens the door, so Hajime couldn’t give a fuck what the car looks like. He scrambles in next to Tooru, closing the door against a burst of wind, and Suga twists around in the seat to grin at them. 

“You got Hajime to come!” 

“It was an impossible task,” Tooru says, struggling to buckle his seatbelt in his gloves. “But you know me, always taking on the impossible and doing it flawlessly.” 

Suga laughs, eyes sparkling at Hajime, like they’re sharing some private secret, even if only for a split second. He’s wearing a white hat with a puffball on top, and in the passenger seat is Sawamura Daichi, who turns his head to give them a friendly, simple greeting. 

Hajime isn’t sure what to make of Daichi. Physically he’s Hajime’s type—nice shoulders and great legs—but he seems like the type of person to go to bed at eight p.m. every night and end up in an extremely boring job with a boring wife. Daichi’s so relaxed and easygoing, the kind of truly dependable teammate Hajime will never be, that Hajime’s almost surprised that he’s even friends with Suga. 

“All buckled up?” asks Suga, turning back around. “We have to hurry!” 

“It’s Iwa-chan’s fault we’re running late,” Tooru says, and Hajime kicks him under the seat. Suga laughs again, shifting the car into drive and pulling away from the curb.

Hajime quickly learns that Suga should never be allowed behind a steering wheel. 

He feels winded by the time they reach the restaurant, the sleepiness completely terrified out of his limbs. He’s gripping the car door, his other hand braced against the seat, as Suga whips into a parking space and screeches to a halt, the wheels spinning on the ice. “Okay!” he says brightly, while Hajime tries to catch his breath and calm his racing heart at the same time. “All in one piece.” 

_Barely,_ Hajime thinks, and as they climb out of the car, he hears Daichi say, “Maybe I should drive on the way home?” 

“Oh, no,” says Suga, tucking the arm of his coat into Daichi’s easily and smiling at Hajime and Tooru as they crunch through the packed snow of the parking lot. “It’s fine! I love to drive.” 

“Maybe you love it too much,” suggests Daichi, but Suga just shakes his head, the bobble on his hat bouncing. 

They find their way inside the cafe, a warm toasty kind of place, with wooden benches instead of chairs and mostly things with avocado on the menu. Hajime can see right away why they chose the place. It’s pretty in a homey sort of way, with a gentrified feel, and it’s the same kind of aesthetic Akaashi uses for his instagram. He probably made the reservations just so Tooru could take a billion pictures of him and then sit with him on the phone for an hour, later, agonizing over which one to post. 

Hajime wants to feel annoyed, or at least condescending, but instead he just looks sideways at Tooru and feels a complicated knot of love for him tighten in his chest. 

They order, and then Tooru pulls out his phone, scrolling through his messages. He never angles the phone away from Hajime when he does this, and Hajime likes it, even though he would never admit it—he likes the glimpse into Tooru’s online life, the way Tooru doesn’t try to hide it from him. It’s nice, sitting on the small wooden booth nearly shoulder-to-shoulder with Tooru’s drapey white sweater, while Tooru shows him the phone and announces, “Akaachan says he still can’t come. Apparently Bokuto is having another breakdown about graduation.” 

“I think Bokuto should get some therapy,” says Suga, dumping a third sugar packet into his coffee. 

“You’re the one who needs therapy,” says Daichi, sounding amused.

Suga waves that away. “I can’t be fixed,” he says. 

“I really think he’s bipolar or something,” says Tooru, typing out a response to Akaashi that mostly consisted of emoticons. “I’m worried about Akaachan. What if Bokuto can’t handle being away from him next year?” 

“They’ll stay together,” says Suga. “I can feel it.” 

“Yeah, but what if Bokuto does something dumb like dropping out of university just to move back here?” 

Suga thinks about that, sucking on his straw. Hajime feels weird for just a moment before deciding it’s not a big deal, talking about Bokuto and Akaashi behind their backs. It’s nothing they wouldn’t say to Akaashi’s face. Hajime knows, because he’s heard Tooru on the phone with Akaashi, saying these exact things. 

“Bokuto is a good player,” says Daichi. “One of the best. I think he’ll put volleyball first.” 

Tooru gasps, putting the phone down. “Don’t say that!” he says. “I think he’ll put Akaashi first. They’re soulmates.” 

“I didn’t mean it was a competition,” says Daichi, his mouth curving up. “I just think Bokuto will find a way to have both.” 

“Don’t act like your life doesn’t revolve around volleyball, Oikawa,” Hajime adds, and Tooru gives him a slightly hurt look. Hajime’s pretty sure it’s fake, because his biomagnetic field stays the same, vibrating a little with the contented happiness of being out with his friends, and with Hajime. 

“I know how to have a work-life balance,” says Tooru, which is a complete lie. “I’m very emotionally intelligent, remember, Iwa-chan? Not like you.” 

“I’m emotionally intelligent,” says Hajime, even though Tooru’s probably right, Hajime’s emotionally constipated, but he’s not an idiot. “I know exactly what you’re feeling right now.” 

Suga snickers a little, and Tooru’s cheeks go just a tinge pinker. “No you don’t,” he says. “That’s rude, Iwa-chan! How many times do I have to tell you not to peep on my emotions?”

“How many times do I have to tell you that I can’t help it?” 

“Iwaizumi is right, Oikawa,” says Daichi. “You’re sort of hard to ignore.” 

Tooru huffs, crossing his arms on the table, looking pointedly away from Hajime for about five seconds before turning back around. “That’s just my magnetic personality,” he says. “I’m very charismatic.” 

Everyone laughs, even Hajime, and Tooru smiles, and the knot in Hajime’s chest expands, melting away into an all-encompassing love for Tooru, his stupid attitude problems, his ridiculous ego, his disgusting brunch aesthetic, even his biomagnetism. When they’re finished laughing, the mood seems even lighter than before, any weirdness lifted, and Hajime lets his leg drift closer to Tooru’s under the table. When Tooru half-stands to grab the sugar, he sits down nearly hip-to-hip with Hajime, but Hajime doesn’t move away. He just sits there, basking in the touch, the warm happiness of Tooru’s biomagnetism, the easy way he laughs. 

When the waitress brings their food, all pretty with strawberries and greenery decorating their plates, Tooru wiggles his arm from between them and slings it across Hajime’s shoulders, warm and heavy. “Take a picture with me, Iwa-chan?” he asks, with a cheeky smile, and Hajime is so thrown off by the question that he forgets to answer, and in a smooth motion Tooru hands his phone to Suga and tilts his head so it rests against Hajime’s temple. 

Hajime forgets to smile. The flash goes off quickly, and Tooru’s fingers tickle the arm of Hajime’s sweater, which is too tight around Hajime’s shoulders in just the right way, and then Suga peeks above the camera. 

“Try to at least _look_ happy, Iwaizumi,” he says, and Daichi chuckles into his coffee, and Hajime’s cheeks burn. 

“I didn’t consent to this,” he says, but he feels Tooru tense around him and regrets the words instantly. “I mean—I’m bad at—I don’t take good pictures.”

“You would if you smiled,” says Suga, and Hajime, in a hurry to correct his mistake and smooth out Tooru’s biomagnetic field again, says, “Fine,” and smiles, shoving his own arm around Tooru’s waist. 

They only hold the pose for thirty seconds, but it feels like several minutes, Hajime’s cheeks aching from the smile, and he’s sure the pictures look unforgivably sappy. He knows that he’s leaning automatically into Tooru’s body, their sweaters coordinating like all of Tooru’s clothes, their arms tight around each other like people who never want to let go. When Tooru pulls away, making grabby hands for the phone, Hajime feels lightheaded and dizzy, and he’s probably red in the face, so he quickly gulps several gulps of his scalding coffee. It’s worth the burnt tongue. 

He purposely doesn’t look at the photos as Tooru scrolls through them, sending all of them to Akaashi, only stopping to eat when Hajime says, “Your food is getting cold, dumbass.”

He keeps his leg pressed to Tooru’s, and Tooru’s biomagnetic field eases back to normal, and he positively _moans_ around the forkful of whipped cream and strawberries he shoves in his mouth. “Awh, Iwa-chan,” he says, still with his mouth full, “You have to try this!” 

Hajime glances at Tooru, his tongue licking at the whipped cream, and then hastily looks away before he can think anything filthy. “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” he says, pretending to push away the forkful of waffle that Tooru tries to offer him. He only pretends for a minute. 

They eat and talk, about Karasuno’s latest team drama (Kageyama and Hinata are having a middle-school-sleepover type of fight, complete with “I’m never speaking to you again!”s), and about Fukurodani, and Suga starts at least two rumors, one of them about Ushijima wearing long underwear under his volleyball uniform for good luck. Hajime sees Tooru texting Hanamaki the rumor under the table, and he thinks that Hanamaki and Suga would make good friends. 

Overall, it’s surprisingly pleasant, even though Hajime had to wake up three hours earlier than he normally would have. He never thought he would enjoy something like brunch, but Suga and Daichi are funny together, they play off each other well, and Hajime has finally concluded that their friendship makes sense, after all, when Suga throws a wrench in all of it. 

Tooru is scribbling the tip onto his and Hajime’s receipt when Suga stands up, says, “I’ll be right back, babe,” and bends to kiss Daichi swiftly, on the mouth. 

It all happens very quickly, very smoothly and casually, and Hajime barely has time to blink before Suga’s sliding out of the bench, heading to the bathroom. Daichi picks up the pen for his own receipt. He looks unbothered, clicking the pen, and Hajime stares at him, trying to process what he just saw. Maybe he imagined it. 

No. That definitely just happened, and Hajime tears his eyes from Daichi to Tooru, who is writing an elaborately long note to the waitress on the back of his receipt. Neither of them are moving, neither of them are raising their heads to look apologetically at Hajime and say, _“Oh, sorry, didn’t you know? Daichi and Suga are dating.”_

They’re dating. It hits Hajime full force, then, just like the moment he learned about Bokuto and Akaashi. He shouldn’t be so surprised, but it feels surreal to look at Daichi and rearrange everything Hajime thought about him, to realize that he, too, is gay, or at least into men, just like Hajime. It’s not something Hajime has a monopoly on, of course, but he usually feels alone in it, the quiet gay one off to the side, hiding his sexuality, accompanied only by the distant figures of Akaashi and Bokuto, the only openly queer volleyball players in the district. 

But Suga and Daichi just kissed in front of him, casual as anything. Hajime stares at the side of Tooru’s head, a slow suspicion creeping up on him, coming to him in pieces. The weird way they all reacted when Hajime asked Suga about his girl problems. The strange tone of Tooru’s voice when he asked, _“Are you homophobic, Iwa-chan?”_ The exclusive sort of club the three of them have formed, across rival teams, for no discernable reason. The way Suga and Akaashi always call Tooru with their relationship problems, as if there’s no one else to go to, no closer friend they could vent to about their love life. The hushed voices on those calls, the way Tooru will go out into the hallway to whisper to Akaashi, like they’re keeping something between them, something not secret exactly but something that only the other one is meant to understand. 

Suga and Akaashi are both gay, that’s why they—

And could this mean that Tooru also—

Hajime remembers belatedly about Sana, but just as quickly he remembers about the girl Daichi dated at the beginning of the year, Michimiya Yui, and it’s all tangled up in his head. While Hajime’s world is still in the process of overturning itself, dumping all his assumptions on their heads, Tooru’s head pops up and he signs the receipt with a flourish. 

“What the hell were you writing?” Hajime asks, his voice sounding far away and disconnected from his body, like he’s on autopilot. 

“A note of encouragement,” says Tooru, as if it should be obvious. “Weren’t you listening to our waitress, Iwa-chan? She said her son plays volleyball, he’s seen me on TV. I’m giving him an autograph. It will probably be extremely valuable in the future. If you ask very nicely, maybe I’ll give you one, too.” 

“Fuck off,” Hajime says, but there’s no power behind it—he’s only half-listening, and the rest of his brain is still reeling with what feels like a monumental discovery. 

Of course having queer friends doesn’t mean Tooru likes men, too. The brunches and instagram photos and reality shows about love don’t mean anything—Hajime doesn’t like any of those things, and he knows there’s no way to _guess_ if Tooru is gay, without asking him, but for the first time in Hajime’s life, it seems like a possibility. Tooru could like men. Hajime’s never even considered it before, that Tooru could look at someone like Sawamura Daichi and think, _Wow, it would be really nice to wrap my hands around his thigh and squeeze_ —that, fuck, Tooru could look at _Hajime_ and think—and think—

Hajime tries to shove the thought away. Okay. Holy hell. He’s _not_ going to go _there,_ not while they’re in public, around Tooru’s friends. 

But he can’t keep the thoughts out of his brain, and he knows he’s probably staring stupidly as they pay and walk back out into the snow, as Tooru wraps his pretty scarf around his neck and says, “Can we go by that news sports shop on the way home? I need to buy new socks.” Hajime can’t stop staring at him and seeing someone new, someone _attainable,_ someone who, in an alternate universe out there somewhere, maybe even their own universe, could want to slide his hand into Hajime’s the way Suga and Daichi are doing. The way Hajime wants to. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not the three-in-one body shampoo iwa lmaoooooo 
> 
> another fluffy chapter for you all! I really loved writing the pretty setter squad haha so this was super fun to edit. thank you as always for all the lovely comments!


	11. chapter 11

When they get back to Hajime’s house, Hajime expects Tooru to force him to watch the dumb documentary about UFOs that he prerecorded, and Hajime’s prepared to say yes. Of course he’ll say yes; they have no homework to do, and Hajime enjoys sitting on the couch with his toes tucked under Tooru’s warm thigh and listening to him ramble endlessly about his own UFO theories while the documentary plays in the background. 

But Tooru grabs the veggie potato chips from Hajime’s pantry, as if he didn’t just stuff himself with strawberry pancakes, and says, “You wanna play COD? I mean, I just wanna watch. I need to update Akaachan on the brunch.” 

Hajime blinks, surprised. He’s never thought that Tooru actually enjoys watching Hajime play video games—he always whines about it, so it’s mostly something Hajime only does when he’s alone, to wind down. He glances at the living room couch, where his gaming system is sprawled across the carpet, and says, “What else do you possibly have to tell Akaashi? You were live-texting him the whole time we were eating.” 

“He wasn’t paying attention to me then,” says Tooru. “So now I need to repeat several things. Being Akaachan’s main source of socialization is time-consuming, but it pays off.” 

Hajime rolls his eyes. Part of him wants to blurt out something stupid like,  _ “Did you become friends with him just because he’s gay?”  _ but he doesn’t want to make things awkward, so he just says, “Whatever,” and follows Tooru over to the couch. Tooru dumps the chip bag in between them and settles against the pillows while Hajime turns on the gaming system and loads up the game, rolling his shoulders to loosen the muscles. 

It’s surprisingly relaxing. Hajime plays mindlessly, getting his excess energy out onto the game, while Tooru chatters about where he thinks Ushiwaka will go to university, and whether Hanamaki will start dating Matsukawa’s girlfriend’s best friend. Hajime keeps stealing glances over at him, at the way his hair is tucked haphazardly behind his ear, at the way his long fingers fly deftly across his phone screen. It’s cozy-homey Tooru, in his thick rumpled sweater and fuzzy socks, and it’s Hajime’s favorite Tooru, except he also loves sleep-cuddly Tooru and early-morning-run Tooru and intense-volleyball Tooru and—

Hajime tears his eyes back to the screen. That particular train of thought is endless. 

After a few minutes, Hajime shifts to put his feet up on the couch, tucking them under Tooru’s sweatpants, and Tooru yelps when Hajime’s cold toes brush his ankle. “Iwa-chan,” he scolds, “Why aren’t you wearing socks? The floor is freezing.” 

Hajime glances down at his own feet. “I don’t know,” he says. “Why do you care? They’re not your feet.”

Tooru clicks his tongue, pushing away the chip bag and scrambling to his feet. Without saying anything he hurries out of the living room, leaving his phone face-up on the couch cushion. The texts in his group chat look suspiciously like they’re talking about Suga’s sex life, and Hajime hastily turns his eyes back to the television before he reads something he can’t un-read. 

When Tooru drops back onto the couch, he’s holding an old pair of Hajime’s woolen socks. “Here,” Tooru says, and without warning, he takes hold of Hajime’s ankle and starts trying to work one of the socks over his toes. Surprised, Hajime jerks away reflexively.

“I can put my own socks on,” Hajime says, but Tooru frowns at him.

“You always have to do everything yourself, Iwa-chan, let me do this one thing.” 

Hajime’s not sure how to respond to that—he wants to argue, but it seems so bizarre, arguing over who’s going to put Hajime’s socks on his feet. So he just goes quiet, leaving the game on pause and watching Tooru bite his tongue between his teeth while he wiggles the sock over Hajime’s toes. It’s bizarre. It’s bizarre, and Hajime wants to say so, he wants to call Tooru a weirdo, but something makes the words stick in his throat. 

It’s just—it’s so disgustingly domestic, Tooru fussing over Hajime’s cold feet. And the more Hajime watches him, the more he realizes how, in spite of its bizarreness, it doesn’t feel out of place in whatever their friendship has become. Washing their team jerseys together, falling asleep in the same bed, brushing their teeth together in the same sink and massaging each other’s legs in the dark of the early, early morning. 

“Do your feet hurt?” Tooru asks, frowning down at the socks, running his thumbs absentmindedly over the faded pattern. 

“Uh—I don’t know,” says Hajime, because he really doesn’t know what’s happening, and Tooru just huffs a little and tugs Hajime’s feet into his lap, settling back against the pillows. Hajime stares at him, his heart beginning to race for no reason. They’re barely even touching, but when Tooru begins to rub circles into the sore spots on Hajime’s heels, Hajime can feel his biomagnetism wrapping around Hajime’s whole body like a blanket. It’s not just affection, Hajime thinks dumbly, it’s  _ care.  _ Tooru is trying to show Hajime how much he cares. 

“Iwa-chan,” says Tooru, still focused on massaging Hajime’s feet, “I want to talk to you about something. Remember that night we had that fight, before I went to the emergency room? When you said I was your responsibility.” 

Hajime winces. “I was worked up,” he says. It’s an emotional place he doesn’t want to return to—back then, in the darkest nights of Tooru’s apathy, Hajime had genuinely begun to think his world would end. “I didn’t mean to get—to get all controlling about where you were, or whatever. I was just worried about you.” 

“I know,” says Tooru. “But you worry too much.”

“I can’t help it.” 

Tooru sighs a little, rubbing his thumbs into the bridge of one of Hajime’s feet. It feels good—his hands are warm, and Hajime’s feet  _ were  _ tired. “I don’t want you to feel like it’s your responsibility to take care of me,” he says, and Hajime’s about to argue, or maybe to apologize, but Tooru adds, “I mean, I want to take care of you too.”

Hajime’s face heats up, and he has to force himself not to rub at his cheeks. He doesn’t know how Tooru can just  _ say  _ embarrassing stuff like that. “You do,” he says gruffly, wiggling his toes to make the point, and Tooru purses his lips, pushing down a wrinkle in the ankle of the sock. 

“I want to do more,” he says. “But you make it hard. You never want to ask anybody for help, Iwa-chan. You think you have to do everything yourself.” 

Hajime just wiggles his toes again because he can’t come up with a good retort. Tooru is right. Hajime has always needed to be the dependable one. But maybe he’s been ignoring that Tooru can be dependable, too, in his own way—Tooru’s always able to push through his own messy emotions and give strangers a smile, gather their team into a huddle, pat anyone on the back. Maybe they’re both a bit too good at bottling things up, but at the end of the day it’s alright, because when it’s just the two of them, they can do simple things like this, caring for each other. 

Hajime swallows, his throat suddenly full of the soft, easy affection he feels thick in the air. “You’ve been, like—ill,” he says, finally, because he doesn’t want Tooru to think that he’s been failing Hajime in any way. 

Tooru glances at him and then back down at his feet. “Well, you’re not perfect, either, Iwa-chan, that’s why I have to keep holding you in my arms while you cry.” 

Hajime kicks at him, accidentally knocking his phone off the couch with a clatter, and Tooru yelps and then laughs, pinching Hajime’s ankle in revenge. “That only happened once,” Hajime growls, cheeks hot. 

“And I’ll do it again,” Tooru says. “Anytime you want, Iwa-chan, just say the word.” 

Hajime kicks at him again, more limply this time, his neck and face burning with the memory of sobbing into Tooru’s shoulder—God, he’s an idiot—but he knows that Tooru means it, and that’s even more embarrassing, in a way that makes Hajime’s whole body warm. If Hajime needed to cry, Tooru would open his arms without question, no matter how much he teased afterward. 

It’s both embarrassingly loving and also concerning, because that means Hajime might actually _ do _ it again. 

He lets Tooru massage his feet and thinks that maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, if he did allow himself to cry a bit more often, although only in the privacy of Tooru’s bedroom. Maybe he could let Tooru be the dependable one occasionally. But only once Tooru proves that he’s not going to accidentally kill himself practicing in the Karasuno gym in the middle of the night. 

After a bit, Tooru’s phone starts to buzz on the carpet again, and Hajime remembers about the brunch. He’s not sure how to bring up the topic, but if he doesn’t even try, it’ll be eating at him all week. “So, uh,” he says, awkwardly, “Daichi and Suga?”

Tooru’s eyes snap up, and Hajime feels the shift in his frequency, like the wind changing right before a storm, the electricity in the room picking up. “Yeah,” Tooru says, but his voice is wary, and Hajime feels a tight coil in his stomach, like Tooru is confirming all of his suspicions. There’s nothing casual about his reaction, and when Hajime tries to swallow again, his throat is dry—the conversation suddenly looms huge, something they can’t come back from, but he pushes forward anyway. 

“They’re—uh, dating?” 

“Yes,” says Tooru, and then he hesitates before saying, in a rush, “Don’t tell me if it bothers you. If it does, just don’t say it, I don’t want to hear it.” 

Hajime gapes at him, pulling his feet back, and Tooru’s eyes dart downward before they flit back up to Hajime’s face. Tooru’s biomagnetic field is tense, anxious, and Hajime’s face still feels hot when he demands, “Do you seriously still think I’m homophobic?” 

Tooru’s eyebrows draw together, and he stumbles over his words for a minute. “I—I don’t know!” he says. “You say things like—like you think that crying is for girls, and you act so awkward whenever anyone brings up Akaashi and Bokuto, you kind of crush your water bottle and look irritated. So maybe you’re probably a  _ little  _ homopho—”

“I’m  _ not  _ homophobic!” Hajime interrupts, and Tooru opens his mouth to retort, the intensity of his biomagnetism rising in the air around them, and there’s a rushing in Hajime’s ears, like it’s now or never, so before he can think about it, he snaps, “I’m gay. Okay? I’m literally gay.” 

Tooru stares at him, mouth still open. 

Hajime’s chest is tight and hot, and he clenches his jaw shut and waits, while the intensity drains out of Tooru’s biomagnetic field, replaced by something that feels suspiciously like Tooru’s heart rate speeding up. 

“You—Iwa, you’re—” 

“Yeah,” Hajime interrupts, because he thinks he’s going to die of embarrassment if Tooru says it aloud, and if this doesn’t go the way Hajime thinks it’s going—if he was wrong about Tooru—but he can’t think about that, he can’t think about anything, so he just says, “So I’m not homophobic. I just. I don’t know how to talk about that stuff, alright? That’s why.” 

“But—” Tooru is still gaping at him like Hajime grew an alien head, his mouth working. “But why didn’t you tell me?” 

“I just said,” snaps Hajime. “I don't know how to—I mean, I just, I didn’t think you would understand.” 

Tooru falls back against the pillows, staring at Hajime. His eyes are so wide, the biomagnetism prickling at Hajime’s skin, making his arm hair stand on end. Hajime tries to swallow again, refusing to look away from Tooru, as Tooru opens and closes his mouth and then says weakly, “You know—you know that I’m bi, right?” 

Hajime finally manages to swallow. “How would I know that?” he says, but he can barely hear it over the racing in his ears, the pounding of his heart. He was right. He was right, Tooru does like guys, but it’s impossible to process, impossible to wrap his head around. Tooru, the same Tooru he grew up with, the same Tooru he’s been pining over for the past two years—all along Tooru has been—

Tooru gives a choked-off squawking noise, kicking across the couch at Hajime, his face red, and Hajime can feel the mess of his own emotions mirrored in Tooru’s biomagnetic field, one of the rare moments they’re feeling the exact same things.

“You can feel my emotions!” Tooru says. “What do you mean, ‘ _ how would I know that _ ?’ You can literally sense everything about me, it’s humiliating!” 

“Being bisexual isn’t an emotion!” Hajime says, and their voices are probably way too loud, the neighbors are going to hear their joint sexuality crisis, and Tooru’s cheeks are so flushed that he looks like he’s going to sink right into the couch. 

“But didn’t you feel—can’t you feel—” Tooru stumbles over himself, rubbing at his eyes, dropping his hands and looking even more flushed than before. “You really didn’t know,” he says, gazing at Hajime, something wild pulsing through his biomagnetic field. 

“Of course I didn’t know,” Hajime says. It’s one of the most embarrassing conversations they’ve ever had, but at least Tooru looks—if anything—more embarrassed than Hajime. Tooru rubs at his face again, pushing his hair back, and after a few moments he manages a weak, clumsy laugh. 

“We’re kinda dumb, Iwa-chan,” he says. 

Hajime yanks one of the pillows from behind him and throws it at Tooru’s flushed face, trying desperately to kill his own blush. “Oi, speak for yourself.”

“I’m not going to be dumb all alone!” Tooru cries, batting the pillow away and glancing back at Hajiime’s face. “I was so nervous to mention it around you. I thought you must know, and you just didn’t want to acknowledge it because you...because it made you uncomfortable.” 

“I’m offended,” says Hajime, his chest still tight, crushed tightly with several warring emotions. “You thought I was homophobic and never confronted me about it?” 

“You’re kinda scary, Iwa-chan!” 

Hajime glares at him, and Tooru cowers behind the pillow, and even though it’s mock fear, Hajime still feels like he needs to say, “Of course I’m not homophobic. And I don’t think crying is for girls. It’s just—I just don’t like doing it, myself. It’s fine when  _ you _ cry.” 

“It’s fine for you, too!” says Tooru. “And it’s fine for you to like guys. You should have just told me. Then we could’ve known about each other way earlier.” 

They’re both silent for a moment, looking at each other, and Hajime feels a little uncomfortable with all the eye contact, but he’s not going to be the first to look away. The skin under his collar is still hot. His mind flashes back to that day at the ramen shop when Tooru first mentioned Akaashi being gay—what if that conversation had gone differently? What if Hajime had been able to admit it, then? Would it have changed anything? 

He must be crazy, to be imagining a world where Tooru confesses his undying love for Hajime, but goddamnit, he deserves to dream a little. 

Hajime grabs another pillow just so he can crush it against his chest, the way Tooru is doing, and then Tooru says, “Well, I guess we know now.” He pauses. “So—what’s your type, Iwa-chan? 

_ You,  _ Hajime nearly says, and then bites his tongue so hard it hurts. “I don’t know,” he says, trying wildly to come up with anyone who isn’t Tooru. “I guess I think Daichi’s kinda hot.” 

Tooru’s eyes widen, and then in a split second he’s scrambling for his phone. “Oh my god. I have to text Suga, right now.” 

Hajime could argue, but he doesn’t, he just lets Tooru swipe through his phone and start typing furiously. Hajime exhales, trying to remind himself that he’s allowed to breathe again. This went better than expected. This pretty much went the best way possible, he now knows that Tooru likes guys, but the problem is that there’s only  _ one  _ guy Hajime wants Tooru to like. 

“We need to add you to our group chat,” Tooru says, shifting on the couch so that he’s tilted closer to Hajime, scooting his butt over onto Hajime’s cushion. From this angle, Hajime can see Tooru opening a group conversation titled ✩ **husbandos✩** , and then Tooru tilts his head back to meet Hajime’s eyes. “I mean, is it okay? It’s just Suga and Daichi and Akaashi and Bokuto. They won’t tell anyone.” 

“It’s okay,” says Hajiime, cheeks warming again. It feels strange to think about people knowing, just because Hajime has kept his feelings to himself for so long, but he doesn’t necessarily want it to be a  _ secret.  _ Now that Tooru knows, it almost doesn’t matter who else knows. “I’m not getting involved in all your petty gossip, though.” 

Tooru laughs. It still sounds a little off, and Hajime can feel the embarrassment still hovering in his biomagnetic field, but he shifts again so that his back is wedged between Hajime’s knees. Before he can allow himself to overthink it, Hajiime parts his knees slightly so that Tooru goes sliding between them with a small noise of surprise, his shoulderblades pressing into Hajime’s chest. 

Tooru doesn’t say anything. But the heat in his biomagnetic field rises, with a swell of the damn  _ Iwa-chan emotion,  _ and Hajime has to take several deep breaths. He can’t get his hopes up. It’s all happening so fast, and he can’t get his hopes up. He can’t. 

But—

It all has to mean  _ something,  _ doesn’t it? 

Hajime can practically hear Matsukawa’s smug voice saying,  _ “I think Oikawa might have a bit of a crush on you, Iwaizumi.”  _ People have always said things like that, in joking ways, ever since they were little. Tooru had once told Hajime’s mom,  _ “I’m going to marry Iwa-chan,” _ and then he had cried when Hajime’s mom explained that he couldn’t. Hajime tries to push the memory away, clearing his throat, but he can’t focus with the affection burning through the room. Tooru nestles himself in the cage of Hajime’s knees, typing his phone number into the group chat, and he does this little nuzzling thing with his head underneath Hajime’s chin that makes Hajime’s heart stick in his chest. He thinks that there’s no way he can relax, in a position like this, but the comforting warmth of Tooru’s affection gets the best of him eventually, melting him against the couch cushions with Tooru’s hair tickling his lips. 

He’s not sure how long they sit that way, only that he never wants it to end. 

* * *

_ tooru oikawa has added iwaizumi hajime to the chat _

daichi sawamura

**Ah, I see you, Iwaizumi. Finally playing for the only team that matters.**

suga-chan 

**AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH**

**AKAASHI DO YOU SEE THIS**

**YOU OWE ME 20 DOLLARS**

akaashi 

**i never agreed to that bet, sugawara-san.**

**but i’ll buy you coffee next week if you want.**

suga-chan

**♡♡♡♡♡♡ ilyyyy**

**Iwa, was Tooru-chan your sexual awakening??!!??!!**

tooru oikawa

**STOP**

**you guys are going to make him leave ;-;**

_ iwazumi hajime has left the chat _

tooru oikawa

**SUGA IM GOING TO CASTRATE YOU**

  
  


* * *

Hajime has made a mistake. 

Tooru has always been a touchy person, ever since they used to sleep in the same futon as babies, since he used to hold Hajime’s hand every day of third grade, since he started watching massage videos just to see the people’s hands on each other, since he started putting his hands on Hajime in the same way. But what Hajime didn’t realize is that Tooru’s been holding back, and now that they’ve reached some kind of silent understanding, all of a sudden Tooru’s all over him twenty-four-seven. 

He sleeps over at Hajime’s almost every night of the winter break, and they’re together throughout the entire day, watching volleyball and going grocery shopping and cooking dinner together for one or both of their parents. Even when they get back to school, Tooru stands behind Hajime on the court and shows him where to put his hands to block, and he leans against Hajime while he laughs on the way home, and he puts his hand on Hajime’s shoulder while he talks to him at Hajime’s locker, and he grabs Hajime’s face to smush their cheeks together for a selfie. It leaves Hajime’s face burning when Tooru releases him, cooing over the photo, and Hajime can barely muster a threat to boil him alive. 

Hajime can’t tell if this is just how Tooru treats his gay friends or it actually  _ means  _ something. 

He rejoins the group chat to see if Suga will give anything away, but he quickly learns that Suga can’t be trusted. He’ll say anything just to sit back gleefully and watch what happens. So Hajime is left suffering on his own while Tooru cuddles up to his back at night, his arms circling Hajime’s waist, his warm cheek against Hajime’s neck. 

It’s torture. 

But it’s incredibly addicting, the burst of affection whenever Tooru grabs his hand to pull him through the hallway, whenever Tooru snuggles his head onto Hajime’s shoulder during a movie. It’s torture when Tooru touches him and torture when he stops, because Hajime can’t stop staring at him in class, staring at his mouth, and at his slim, gloved hands and wondering what it would be like to fall asleep holding them, to kiss each one of his fingers and feel the shiver go through Tooru’s biomagnetic field. 

Hajime’s in a constant state of distraction. Tooru looks prettier than ever lately, his eyelashes curly, his cheeks pink, his legs strong and smooth under his practice jersey when he leaps into the air for another serve that steals Hajime’s breath away. 

On Friday night, when Tooru hovers next to him after practice and whispers, “Can we stay late, Iwa-chan?” Hajime nearly says no. Tooru’s not supposed to practice late anymore, and Hajime needed to take a cold shower, like, yesterday, but he feels the twinge of insecurity in Tooru’s biomagnetism while Tooru gazes at him. 

Hajime thinks about the upcoming preliminaries, about Karasuno. He thinks about Tooru’s last chance to go to Nationals, and he glances at Tooru’s pout and says, “Fine, just this once.” 

Tooru’s mood lifts bright and happy, with an underlying current of excitement, and Hajime rubs at his face, hard, as he looks away. 

* * *

It’s cold out when they leave the gym, and Tooru tucks the arm of his jacket into Hajime’s. Hajime lets him, staring resolutely ahead and keeping his jaw clenched shut. The snow is drifting down prettily around them, but Tooru’s body heat warms him through the jacket as he chatters about silly things. The silly things are precious to Hajime now, no matter how unimportant, because he knows what Tooru is like without them. 

They walk along the bridge together, and Hajime glances up at Tooru, at the snowflakes catching in his hair. He wants to ask if the specialists are still showing him those simulations, if things have gotten worse at the lab, if Tooru has ever thought about leaving the lab and never coming back. He wants to ask if Tooru is ever afraid of losing Hajime, the way Hajime is afraid of losing him. He wants to ask if Tooru would be okay with continuing this walk home for hours and hours, maybe for the rest of their lives, just so that Hajime can feel Tooru’s warmth and happiness bleed into his veins for all of eternity. 

Instead, he asks, “D’you wanna go see if the aliens made crop circles in the snow?” 

Tooru pauses for a moment on the sidewalk, stumbling when Hajime keeps walking, Tooru’s other hand coming up to grab at Hajime’s elbow. “Are you serious, Iwa-chan? Have you become a believer?” 

Hajime rolls his eyes, trying to fight down the ridiculous surge of sentimentality. It’s stupid to return to the crop-circle field, but for some reason—for some reason he wants to go there just to prove to himself that things have gotten better. He wants to replace the stark, cold horribleness of the last night at the field with a new memory, filled with Tooru’s warm joy. He hasn’t forgotten what Tooru said that night;  _ I want to feel this.  _

Hajime wants him to have a chance to feel it now. 

“I didn’t say I was  _ expecting _ to see any crop circles,” he says. “I just want to prove you wrong.” 

Tooru huffs out a laugh, shoving at Hajime’s shoulder, but without letting go of his arm. “You can’t prove me wrong, Iwa-chan. It’s impossible to prove the non-existence of something.” 

“I’ll prove the non-existence of your ass when I kick it.”

“Such a brute, Iwa-chan,” Tooru chides, hugging his arm, and Hajime feels stupidly warm even in the freezing winter air. “You’re lucky you’re so handsome. Otherwise life would be very difficult for you.” 

Hajime’s body goes hot. “What—what the fuck is that supposed to mean?” he sputters, trying to yank his arm away from Tooru’s hug, but Tooru just laughs loudly and hangs on, leaning away from Hajime like he can escape his wrath that way. Hajime can’t believe how much power he’s given this asshole over him—Tooru shouldn’t be able to mess with him so easily, and in revenge he tries to stomp on Tooru’s foot as they crunch through the snow, but Tooru sidesteps him quickly, still laughing. 

“Ah ah ah, Iwa-chan,” he says. “Don’t forget how well I know you.” 

“I regret you,” Hajime grumbles, a dumb fucking statement that makes no sense yet somehow encapsulates every emotion he’s had in the past three years. 

Tooru tugs him down the path that leads between stores to the crop-circle field, and before they’ve even descended the sloping incline that leads to the grass, Tooru is pointing, saying loudly, “I think I see one! Iwa! Do you see it?”

“I see darkness,” says Hajime. “That’s all that there is to see.” 

“Are you blind, Iwa-chan?” 

“I’m fine,” says Hajime. “You’re the one whose eyes don’t work.” 

Tooru hums excitedly, pulling him down the incline, and Hajime steps carefully in his snowy footsteps, trying not to slip on the ice. It’s too wet to sit on the grass the way they did the last time they were here, so they just stand at the base of the hill, gazing up. 

There are no crop circles. The aliens must be up there, in the sky, with the myriad of glowing space dust. 

“I think we’ll see them someday,” Tooru says, leaning against Hajime, like he read Hajime’s mind. Tooru’s side is warm, and Hajime can feel his fond contentment, that quiet joy that settles deep into Hajime’s bones. “The aliens will come down and tell me what extra elements they spilled into my genetic makeup, and then we’ll finally understand everything.” 

“We don’t need the aliens,” says Hajime. He allows himself to lean back, so that his body presses snugly against Tooru’s. “We’ll figure it out on our own. There have to be answers.” 

“The answers are in the sky,” says Tooru. “With the aliens.” 

That doesn’t make sense, but then nothing about Tooru has ever made sense, so Hajime doesn’t argue. Tooru is right. Hajime can’t prove the non-existence of anything, and he can’t figure where Tooru’s biomagnetism comes from. Maybe eighteen years ago, the aliens looked down from the stars at baby Hajime crying in the hospital and decided he needed a partner, and maybe they placed Tooru in that hospital bed like an alien changeling, giving him extra emotions to make sure he and Hajime could always understand each other. 

Hajime tucks his hand into the arm Tooru is using to cling to him. His throat is full. 

Tooru looks at him, his beautiful hair lifting in the chilly air, a snowflake clinging to his eyelash. “Can you feel my emotions even through the coat?” he asks. “They’re stronger now, aren’t they?” 

Hajime nods. They get stronger every day, but he thinks it’s just because Tooru touches him so much, continually imbuing Hajime with all his feelings. “I can feel them,” he says. “They’re nice.” 

A small shiver goes through the biomagnetism. Hajime gazes at Tooru and realizes, fully, for the first time, that Tooru likes being told that his biomagnetic field can feel good—maybe Tooru  _ needs  _ to be told. 

“It really does feel nice,” Hajime says again, watching Tooru’s face, and he can feel the shiver again, the way Tooru’s mouth parts just slightly. “Haven’t I told you that? Whenever you’re happy, or you feel good, it feels good, just sitting next to you. Like watching movies and stuff—it’s nice to feel all your reactions to whatever’s happening, even if the plot makes no sense.” 

“Really?” Tooru asks, and his voice cracks on the word, and he shakes his head a little, the snowflakes falling out of his hair like stars. 

“Yeah,” says Hajime, a little more firmly than necessary, turning so that he can grab Tooru’s other elbow with his other hand. Tooru blinks at him, wide-eyed, something intense running through his biomagnetic field, almost like a sob. “It feels really good. Sometimes it—it feels so good it’s embarrassing. Like when you touch me during practice.” God. “Or when you massage my shoulders after a game.”  _ God.  _ “Or when you—I don’t know. When I wake up and you’re clinging to me like a starfish. I don’t know. It feels really warm. It’s good. Okay?” 

The something intense runs through the biomagnetism again, the air shuddering around Hajime, and Tooru tucks his shoulders in, glancing down and then back up at Hajime. “Really? Like, you’re not just saying—”

“I’m not just saying.” Hajime takes a deep breath, trying to keep his chest from heaving, and then says, “I like it, okay? A lot. I don’t know what I’m going to do if you ever stop, that’s how much I like it.” 

Tooru shudders again, leaning forward so that his forehead tips against Hajime’s, just for a moment, his eyes closed so that Hajime can see the bluish tint of his eyelids in the dark. “I like—” his voice breaks, and he clears his throat, lifting his head again and opening his eyes. “I like that you like it.” 

“Good,” says Hajime, and then he’s not sure what to say—he’s burning with a million things he’s too embarrassed to say, shuffling his feet. “You can keep doing it, then.” 

There’s a pause, and Hajime’s about to fucking throw himself at Tooru, grab his face and kiss him or something dangerous, but then Tooru shivers again and asks, in a small voice, “Can I—hug you?” 

“Of course,” Hajime says, automatically, and it’s only when Tooru gazes at him with glassy, dazed eyes that he realizes that they haven’t hugged since—since Tooru’s diagnosis. Maybe not even since the Kageyama incident. They’ve cuddled on the couch and in Tooru’s bed, but it’s always been chest-to-back, Tooru’s heart kept safely away from Hajime’s, where their biomagnetic fields are strongest. 

Hajime’s throat suddenly feels dry. 

Tooru slowly slides his hands around Hajime’s coat, pressing his fingers into Hajime’s back, and then all in one motion he tightens his arms and crushes Hajime to his chest. Hajime gasps, the air knocked from his lungs, and he feels the rush of all Tooru’s raw emotions, hooked up directly to Hajime’s brain: warmth and nerves and yearning and an adoration so powerful Hajime can’t see for a solid ten seconds—it’s pure and overwhelming. He blinks, trying to catch his breath, and puts his own arms around Tooru’s back, squeezing him. 

It’s incredible. Hajime can barely process all the emotions he’s feeling—he can barely breathe. His entire body is tingling, hypersensitive when Tooru buries his face into Hajime’s shoulder, but it feels good, it feels so good that Hajime’s legs wobble, it feels so good that Hajime can only cling onto Tooru and gaze at nothingness over his shoulder, his mouth parted. He’s hot, a sudden and drastic change in temperature from the air outside, and he can feel Tooru taking deep, shuddery breaths, his forehead pressed to the shoulder of Hajime’s coat. 

“Can we,” and Hajime should really stop himself, but he can’t, not with the dazzling intensity of all the sensations he feels every time Tooru’s thighs brush against his own, “Can I take off my coat?” 

Tooru lifts his head, and for a moment Hajime thinks he’s messed up, because the biomagnetic field seizes, but on Tooru’s face is a drunken kind of want, and he nods wordlessly, struggling out of his own coat. They have to stop touching in order to shed their jackets, but then Tooru wraps his arms around Hajime again, their chests press together with only the thin material of their practice jerseys separating them, and Hajime—

Hajime groans, pressing himself close, his head tilting back, and Tooru gives a muffled whimper into his shoulder, where he’s pressing his mouth to the collar of Hajime’s shirt. 

God. It’s a feeling beyond just the tingling warmth of massaging each other’s limbs, beyond the solid heat of Tooru’s arm slung over Hajime’s shoulders. It’s like Tooru’s chest has opened up and his heart is  _ right there,  _ all the emotions multiplied tenfold, and they’re all intense, writhing feelings like  _ oh my god Hajime  _ and  _ is this really happening  _ and  _ I’m going to die  _ and  _ I want to do this forever  _ and  _ this feels good, this feels so good, oh god oh god it feels good— _

“What does it feel like?” Tooru rasps, lifting his head just a little, and Hajime shudders against him, his hands fisting in the back of Tooru’s shirt, clinging to him tightly so Tooru won’t even think of moving his heart away from Hajime’s own. 

“It feels like—” It feels like Hajime’s entire mind has been wiped clean, gone completely white. He doesn’t have the words for the intensity of Tooru’s trembling emotions, the way all his hopes and dreams seem to be shivering right there, bare before Hajime, but one of the emotions overpowers all the others, sinking deep into Hajime’s mind so it’s all he can taste, all he can think about. 

It’s the same emotion he’s been feeling the past few months. The emotion that sighs  _ Iwa-chan,  _ the emotion that blooms huge and excited when Hajime comes into the room, the emotion that pounds in Tooru’s chest—in Hajime’s chest—when their hearts are pressed together like this. 

“It feels like love,” Hajime says, unthinking, and he can feel the biomagnetism seize again. 

Tooru lifts his head, and even though his arms don’t loosen their iron grip on Hajime’s body, Hajime feels suddenly afraid. The moment feels so wild, so intense, and if Hajime just messed it up—

But on Tooru’s face is a broken kind of vulnerability, his cheeks wet, his eyes huge and dark. “Hajime,” he whispers, and it’s like a plea, and Hajime can feel the hope and the terror pulsing in tandem around them, and he knows, then. 

He knows. 

Tooru’s emotions are burned raw into Hajime’s own chest, and he’s always been the ones with his feelings on display, a harsh spotlight on his heart, and it’s not fair. Hajime has always been able to feel Tooru’s emotions, has always be given small glimpses into his deepest secrets. 

Tooru deserves to feel Hajime’s emotions, too, for once. 

“I love you,” Hajime says, his hands pressed firm into Tooru’s back, watching his face while he says it. “I’m—I’m in love with you.” 

Tooru stares at him.

There’s a moment where the frequency stops vibrating, where the air stands still, where Tooru’s mouth is frozen in a small  _ oh.  _

And then Hajime feels the biomagnetism crash back into him, the emotions climbing, and Tooru crushes him against his chest again, his breath coming fast and raspy. 

“Hajime,” he says. “Hajime, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.” 

Hajime tightens his arms around Tooru as Tooru shakes, like his body is unable to contain his frantic emotion. Tooru’s face is still wet when he pressed his cheek against the side of Hajime’s neck, whispering, “Oh my god, Hajime.” 

Hajime feels so hot, and a bit lightheaded. He just admitted it. All these years later, he finally admitted it, and even though he knows—he can  _ feel _ —that Tooru loves him, he still can’t swallow the anxiety in his tight throat. 

“You have to say it back, asshole,” he says, and his voice wavers, and Tooru lifts his head so quickly that his hair slides across Hajime’s eyelids. His eyes are blown wide when he looks into Hajime’s face, and he untangles one of his hands from Hajime’s coat and touches the side of Hajime’s face instead. His palm is impossibly hot. 

“Of course I love you,” Tooru says. “Hajime, you knew that. You already knew that. I’ve been in love with you since we were kids.” 

Hajime’s throat is suddenly even tighter. “What?” 

“I’ve been in love with you for years,” Tooru says, staring at Hajime like he can’t quite believe he exists. The biomagnetic field pulses around them. “Since we were—probably since we were ten. Don’t you remember when I told your mom I was going to marry you?” 

“I thought you had forgotten about that.”

“Of course I didn’t!” Tooru pressed his thumb against Hajime’s cheek, still staring at him. “I meant it. I still do. I thought—I thought you knew. Can’t you feel it?” 

Hajime opens his mouth and then closes it. He feels suddenly idiotic, flushed and sweaty out here in the middle of a freezing cold field. He’s been able to feel it, of course he has, but he’s always assumed Tooru just liked being around him, that Tooru was just happy to see him. He’s always assumed Tooru just loved him as a friend, his best friend. 

“I—I didn’t know,” he says. “I mean, I knew you loved me, but not—not in that way.”

“I do,” Tooru says, his eyes intense, a little watery. “I do, Hajime, I love you so much, I wanted—I wanted—I always wanted to just—to just be allowed to love you.” 

Hajime’s throat closes up again, and then he pulls Tooru in again, so their chests are flush against each other, so his mouth is against Tooru’s neck when he says, “You are. God. Of course you are.”

  
  


* * *

Hajime wakes the next morning in a slow haze of warmth and Tooru, bundled up in Hajime’s arms, his face snuggling into the crook of Hajime’s neck. His chest is pressed to Hajime’s, and Hajime can feel his searing heat through their thin sleep shirts, but it’s not as overwhelming as last night. Instead, the biomagnetic field has evened out around them, a heavy blanket of contentment, as Tooru nuzzles into Hajime’s shoulder, his eyelashes grazing the bare skin of Hajime’s neck. 

“Hey,” Hajime whispers, his voice scratchy from sleep, and Tooru hums against him, his lips pressed right above Hajime’s loose collar. His body is soft and pliant and Hajime feels impossibly comfortable, so cozy in the thick cocoon of Tooru’s tenderness, and he nearly drops off to sleep again when Tooru mouths at his neck. 

A spark of heat in Hajime’s stomach wakes him up again, instantly. 

Tooru’s  _ tongue  _ is touching him, wet and soft, licking at the hollow of Hajime’s throat. Hajime makes a raspy sound, no words, just sound, and Tooru kisses him there, a gentle kiss like he’s gifting the tiny electric shock to Hajime’s skin. Hajime shivers, knocking his knee against Tooru’s. 

“C’mere,” he manages, his voice still raw and rough, but Tooru obeys immediately, tugging himself up with his hands on Hajime’s shoulders, and his face is red from the sleep, his cheek creased from the pillow. 

“Haji,” Tooru breathes, like a sigh, and Hajime tangles a hand in the back of his messy hair and pulls him in. 

Tooru’s mouth tastes like sleep and his lips are dry but the sound he makes against Hajime’s mouth sinks straight into Hajime’s heart. There’s no shock ripping through his biomagnetic field like Hajime felt when Tooru kissed Sana; instead, it’s like a slow fire burning, the way Hajime licks into his mouth slowly, running his tongue along the top of Tooru’s mouth until Tooru whines, open-mouthed, and tilts his head to kiss back. When he shifts on the mattress, his chest presses against Hajime’s again, and Hajime feels the surge of desire, the incessant feeling pouring through Hajime’s ribs that says  _ more, more, more.  _

Tooru slides his own hands into Hajime’s short hair, smoothing his thumbs against Hajime’s temples, and they kiss like that for what feels like hours, just holding each other. 

Hajime eases away, eventually, with several softer kisses to Tooru’s mouth. He can see Tooru’s face, now, the way Tooru blinks at him blearily, his eyes unfocused without his contact lenses, his face pink, his mouth swollen and wet. Hajime can’t resist kissing him again, just once, just to hear the soft  _ mm  _ sound Tooru makes when Hajime presses their mouths together.

“Ah,” says Tooru, sounding dazed and slightly disoriented, when Hajime pulls away. His eyes are caught on Hajiime’s mouth. “Iwa-chan, have you been...kissing people? Without telling me?” 

“What?” Hajime says, smoothing Tooru’s hair off his forehead. Tooru blinks. “Of course not. Who would I be kissing?” 

“Ah—I don’t know.” Tooru rubs at his mouth, still flushed. Hajime can feel the heaviness of his biomagnetic field, thick with affection and embarrassment and something like awe. “You haven’t been kissing anyone but me?” 

“No,” says Hajime. Maybe this is something Tooru will tease him about, later, but he can’t bring himself to feel embarrassed. “You haven’t been kissing anyone either.”

Tooru shakes his head, his hair messy on the pillow. “The only one I want to kiss is Iwa-chan.” 

He slides a cold foot between Hajime’s ankles, and another time Hajime would have kicked him away, but today Tooru slides his hands back up into Hajime’s hair and Hajime forgets every thought besides  _ kiss him, kiss him, kiss him.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaah i've been waiting so long to post this part!! and i'm even more excited for the rating to go up, stay tuned lovelies :) and thank you so much for all the wonderful comments, y'all keep me motivated always!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter makes good on the rating for this fic, so if you wanna skip that part, stop reading before the last scene break, at "no one has ever warned him about this" :)

“Am I,” Tooru starts, and then pauses, his thumbs over his phone. They’re at their favorite ramen place for dinner on Sunday night, and Tooru is a bit sweaty from tossing balls around at the gym and from the heated makeout session in the locker room afterward. Kissing Tooru is quickly becoming Hajime’s favorite pastime, maybe even in competition with volleyball. 

  


“What?” 

  


Tooru flushes prettily. Of course he looks perfect even when he’s sweaty, his hair swept off his forehead artfully, his shirt falling past his sharp collarbones. Hajime has been meaning to bite marks into those collarbones, but he’s not sure if they need to have a conversation about it beforehand. 

  


“Am I your boyfriend?” Tooru asks, and it sounds awkward, even though he’s trying hard to keep his voice level and casual. 

  


Hajime raises his eyebrows across the table. “I thought that was what we were doing?” 

  


“Stop, Iwa-chan! Don’t give me that look,” Tooru cries, kicking at him under the table. “I have to ask. It’s polite to ask about these things.” 

  


Hajime opens his mouth to make another snarky remark, something along the lines of  _ You didn’t ask before mauling my neck earlier,  _ but then he pauses. Tooru  _ did  _ ask before kissing the back of his neck earlier. In fact it seems like a constant refrain of his, now that Hajime stops to look back at the last couple of days—a litany of  _ can I hug you _ s and  _ Is this okay? Is this okay? Is this okay?  _

  


Something slightly unpleasant twists Hajime’s stomach, even though it’s perfectly reasonable for Tooru to ask those things, and the answer has always been yes. But it reminds Hajime of things he doesn’t want to remember. 

  


Tooru will probably always need to ask. He’ll never be able to be sure, the way a normal person could be. 

  


“You can be my boyfriend,” Hajime says, and the word sounds foreign on his tongue, a little strange. 

  


Tooru pouts a little, jutting out his chin and resting it on his knuckles. “You don’t have to sound so enthusiastic, Iwa-chan.” 

  


Hajime reaches across the table to flick Tooru’s arm. “Of course I want you to be my boyfriend,” he says, neck warming up. “I told you I’m in love with you, remember? What’s not enthusiastic enough about that?” 

  


The heat in Tooru’s biomagnetic field rises a couple of degrees, and he bites on the side of his cheek, sucking it into his mouth. “Me, too,” he says, after a pause, and Hajime’s neck warms even more, and then Tooru hurriedly picks up his phone again, as if the embarrassment of the conversation is just too much for him. Perfect Tooru, all flustered because of Hajime—it’s more power than Hajime ever expected to have, and it’s really doing a lot for him. He wants to push Tooru against the back of his booth and kiss him until his mouth is raw, until he’s panting. 

  


They just did that less than an hour ago in the locker room. But it’s already been too long for Hajime. 

  


“I needed to know so I can accurately report to the group chat,” says Tooru, tapping on his phone. He’s seriously addicted to that thing, and Hajime has no idea how, when he spends his entire days playing volleyball with Hajime. “They’ve all been making fun of me for being obsessed with you, and I need to have the last laugh. It's very important.” 

  


Hajime rolls his eyes. “I’m starting to think you want to date me just to prove to your group chat that you can.” 

  


Tooru huffs, kicking at him again. “Stop being insecure, Iwa-chan,” he says, even though Hajime wasn’t. “Of course they’re right, I am obsessed with you. But it paid off in the end, that’s what counts.” 

  


Hajime’s flush spreads to his face, and he glances quickly around the restaurant, but no one’s looking at them.  _ Still _ —the way Tooru can just  _ say  _ things like that—and he’s not even saying it to tease. It’s the truth; Hajime knows because of the steadiness of his biomagnetic field. He clears his throat. 

  


“I’m obsessed with you, too,” he says, quietly but clearly, to see how Tooru will react. His biomagnetism perks up immediately, and his eyes snap up to Hajime’s, and Hajime fights down the squirm of heat that notices how  _ reactive  _ Tooru is to everything. 

  


“I know,” says Tooru, but it wavers just slightly, his cheeks going pink. “Everyone is obsessed with me, Iwa-chan. My face is all over the news, haven’t you noticed? Or are you too busy gazing dreamily at my face in real life?” 

  


Hajime throws a napkin at him, and Tooru swats it away, and Hajime says, “You have a terrible personality, have I ever told you?” 

  


“You love me anyway,” says Tooru, and Hajime can’t even argue with that anymore, because it’s true and Tooru knows it’s true and Hajime doesn’t ever want him to doubt that it’s true, so. His own pride will have to suffer. 

  


“Yeah, whatever,” is all he says, wrapping his fork around his noodles again while Tooru types away at his phone. When Tooru finally sets the phone down and picks up his own fork, Hajime asks, “Are you going to tell the team?” 

  


Tooru blinks at him. “Am  _ I  _ going to tell them?” 

  


“Well—” Hajime doesn’t know how to respond to that. Tooru is the one with experience with this, Hajime has never even mentioned it to anybody. “You’re the captain,” he says lamely. “You should make the call.”

  


“That’s not how it works, Iwa-chan,” says Tooru. “We have to make decisions together. I can’t make a decision for both of us.” 

  


“Fine,” says Hajime. “Do you want to tell them?” 

  


Tooru hesitates, glancing to the side. “I—I think everyone always knows about me. I mean, they all know that I—that I’ve liked you, for a while.” 

  


Hajime stares at him, letting his fork fall back into his bowl. “You told them?” 

  


“No,” says Tooru defensively, the color rising back up into his face. God. He blushes so easily, it’s maybe one of the hottest things Hajime has ever seen. “They can just feel it. That’s what I thought—I mean, I thought you must already know! Haven’t you been able to feel it all this time?” 

  


Hajime’s hand hovers on his fork. Tooru said this about his sexuality too— _ haven’t you been able to tell? _ —and all of a sudden the reason why crystalizes in front of Hajime. Tooru thinks that Hajime knew he was in love with him. Tooru thinks that Hajime has been able to sense his feelings all along, and he thinks that Hajime avoided the topic, he thinks that Hajime knew and ignored it. 

  


“Tooru,” he says before he can think through the words, “of course not. Don’t you think I would have said something?” 

  


Tooru cuts his eyes at him. The insecurity is rising around him, like a self-defense that betrays him instead of protecting him. “You can feel my emotions, Hajime! Don’t play. I’m not asking you to lie to—to make me feel better.” 

  


“I wouldn’t lie to you,” Hajime says, grabbing the edge of the table and leaning forward. “Tooru, listen to me. I wouldn’t lie about this. You think I knew you liked me and I just pretended not to?” 

  


Tooru’s full-on blushing now. “Well—well!” 

  


“That’s bullshit,” Hajime says. “I’ve been in love with you for over a year. I was the one who thought I had no chance.” 

  


Tooru shakes his head, hair flying. “I’m the one who—”

  


“Tooru, I  _ didn’t know. _ ” 

  


“How did you not know! Are you actually stupid, Iwa-chan?”

  


Hajime grabs his wrist, closing his fingers over Tooru’s fluttering pulse. “I knew you liked being around me. I just thought it was your normal affection, that’s all.” 

  


Tooru blinks rapidly. The insecurity shrinks but doesn’t disappear. “What about how excited I got whenever you touched me?” he demands. “And how happy I was every time you walked into the gym? And what about that time—that time I walked in on you in the shower, I know I gave it away that night—” 

  


Hajime’s body goes hot at that memory. He had definitely felt the arousal in Tooru’s stupid biomagnetic field, he had just—not known what to do with it, so he had ignored it, or chalked it up to embarrassment, and shit, maybe Tooru is right. Maybe Hajime really is an idiot. 

  


“I’ve had to be  _ so careful, _ ” Tooru chokes out, “in the locker rooms, all the time, Hajime, because I didn’t want everyone to feel—” 

  


Hajime thinks he’s going to lose control if they have this conversation in a public fucking place. “Okay,” he interrupts hastily, “okay, okay! I get it. I didn’t—somehow I didn’t realize, okay? I’m emotionally constipated, just like you always said.” 

  


Tooru stares at him, his breath still coming fast, but Hajime stares at him resolutely, despite the heat pulsing through his own body, and he feels the moment Tooru believes him, the acceptance settling into his biomagnetic field. 

  


“I should have known,” Tooru says. “I should have known Iwa-chan wouldn’t know someone had a crush on him even if they confessed directly to his face.” 

  


“Asshole,” says Hajime, his face warm. “You did confess directly to my face, and now we’re dating, so what’s your problem?” 

  


Tooru scoffs a little, but the tension in his biomagnetism eases even more, and he leans back in the booth. “I’ve liked you since we were little,” he says. “Maybe you just got used to feeling it. I even told my mom about it, when we were in middle school, but she said maybe you wouldn’t feel the same way, because you might only like girls. She said to wait and see.” 

  


Maybe Hajime should be surprised that Tooru’s mother knows, but thinking back at the warm, fond way she’s always looked at the two of them together, Hajime guesses he probably should have known. Tooru is a mama’s boy, of course he’d tell her about his love life. 

  


“I probably liked you back then, too,” Hajime says, surprising himself a little with the admission. “I mean, I always thought you were too pretty for your own good. But I didn’t admit it to myself until last year. Around—before Valentine’s Day. We were sitting in the clubroom and you were wearing this sweater and I realized I wanted to keep looking at you like that.” 

  


Tooru’s mouth parts a little. Hajime didn’t really think that confession through before he said it, but the reaction is worth it. God. He thinks of all the things he can tell Tooru later, about how pretty he is, how much Hajime loves his hair and his eyelashes and his collarbones and his strong legs. He thinks about finding out if Tooru’s flush crawls down his chest, if it covers his entire body. 

  


“Iwa-chan,” Tooru says. “You’re much more romantic than I expected. I expected you to be a caveman, but here you’re telling me you remember the moment you realized you liked me. You remember what I was  _ wearing. _ ” 

  


Hajime throws another napkin at him. “I know how to be romantic.” 

  


“Clearly.” Tooru’s eyes are still a little too wide, and it makes Hajime hot all the way down to his toes. “I can’t wait to brag to Suga and Akaachan about this. The way Suga figured out he liked Daichi was when he realized he was seeking out erotica where the love interest looked like him. This is way better.” 

  


“Do I want to know how Akaashi found out he liked Bokuto?”

  


“You do not,” says Tooru, a bit primly, and then they both laugh, and Hajime feels rosy and warm, already thinking about getting Tooru back into his bed and kissing him until neither of them can think anymore. 

  
  


* * *

  


In the end they decide to only tell Hanamaki and Matsukawa, for now. Tooru says that maybe if they make it to Nationals, they’ll tell the rest of the team. Hajime suspects that some of them already know, or will soon, now that Tooru’s affection for Hajime is blown completely out in the open, stronger and more obvious than ever before, and with an added tinge of something satisfied. Tooru’s love now feels like the love of someone who knows he’s loved in return. 

  


Hanamaki and Matsukawa, predictably, don’t act surprised. “I knew I felt something suspicious going on,” says Hanamaki. “No one would be that excited to see Iwaizumi unless they wanted to jump him.” 

  


“Wow,” says Hajime. “Thanks.” 

  


“You forget that Makki has no emotional intelligence,” Tooru tells Hajime, in a lofty sort of voice, as if Hanamaki isn’t sitting right in front of them. “Horniness is one of the only emotions he understands.” 

  


“Yeah, well,” says Hanamaki. “I understood it correctly this time, didn’t I?”

  


Tooru frowns at him. Matsukawa says, “I suspected, too. Not because of the biomagnetism, though. I just thought all the  _ extra practice  _ you guys were doing at night—I thought, there’s no way all of that is just extra  _ practice. _ ”

  


“It was!” Tooru yelps. “It was, tell him, Hajime.”

  


Hajime’s ears heat up at the casual way Tooru drops his name, but he just says, “That was just Shittykawa overworking himself as usual. We told you, we just started dating, like this weekend.” 

  


Matsukawa shrugs, but he doesn’t look convinced, he just looks like  _ Okay, I’ll let them have this one _ . Hajime decides it’s not worth arguiing the point—the more defensive they look, the more Matsukawa and Hanamaki will think they’ve been fucking in the gym after practice. 

  


All in all, it’s relatively painless, coming out to them, and Tooru seems to take it in stride, too. He doesn’t behave any differently toward Hajime around the team, just the normal amount of excessive touching and whining  _ Iwa-chan,  _ but Hajime sees Yahaba giving them a raised-eyebrows look anyway. Hajime just raises his eyebrows in return. He doesn’t care if Yahaba knows, or suspects, as long as no one lets it affect the team dynamic. 

  


They’re still winning all their practice matches; Hajime doesn’t think anything is going to affect the team dynamic. 

  


* * *

  


Dating Tooru is a lot like being his best friend. At least, it’s a lot like whatever they were doing  _ before  _ they were dating, which admittedly was probably more intense than just best-friendship. But now when they sleep together, they hold each other chest-to-chest, so Hajime can feel the slow rise and fall of Tooru’s chest and the sleepy ease of his biomagnetism. When they walk home from practice after locking the gym behind everyone else, Hajime gets to hold Tooru’s hand while Tooru points out random stars in the dark sky. When Hajime massages Tooru’s legs on his couch at the end of a long week, he’s allowed to slide his hands higher on Tooru’s thighs, listening for the hitch in Tooru’s breath when Hajime’s thumbs skate across the sensitive skin under his shorts. 

  


And when Hajime sees Sana in Tooru’s classroom one Monday, he no longer feels that twinge of irrational fear, the fear that Tooru will leave him for someone else, someone better. 

  


Hajime’s just meant to be bringing his detention slip to the office (inappropriate language in class, again), but when he passes by Tooru’s literature classroom, he can feel Tooru’s biomagnetic field through the walls and can’t resist stopping. When Hajime peers inside the tiny window in the classroom door, he sees Tooru sitting at his desk, talking to some girl while the other students mill around them, and it takes him a moment to recognize that the girl is Sana. 

  


She looks different. Her hair has grown, and her sleeves are rolled up to show a tattoo snaking around her left arm. She hands Tooru a book, and Hajime sees Tooru smile and say something, his faint biomagnetism stuttering between nerves and relief. 

  


But it’s not the nerves Hajime felt before, when Tooru liked Sana. There’s something more desperate about the feeling now, and Hajime lets his eyes linger on their conversation until he’s sure everything is okay—that Tooru can handle it. 

  


Hajime thinks about it while he walks the rest of the way to the office. The smile on Tooru’s face felt genuine, and Hajime knows, deep in his chest, what it would mean for Tooru if he and Sana could be friends again. Tooru can probably never have that with Kageyama—neither of them would want it—but maybe his friendship with Sana could get past the trauma they both went through. 

  


Hajime hopes so. He knows Tooru’s recovery will mean more than medication withdrawal, more than shaky hands and gray medical gloves, and maybe it will take years, maybe it will take the rest of their lives. But this could be a start. The beginning. 

  
  


* * *

  


It feels like the pieces of Hajime’s life have all, finally, fallen into the right places. As the winter creeps by, he and Tooru spend a lot of time bundled up in sweaters and blankets on his couch, discussing universities. Tooru wants to go to Tokyo—schools there have obviously scouted him—and Hajime thinks he could go to the city, too, if it meant being with Tooru. He doesn’t plan to keep playing seriously at a university level, although he hasn’t told Tooru what he has been thinking of doing. 

  


It’s not that he’s worried that Tooru won’t understand why Hajime wants to study medicine, but rather that he’s worried Tooru will understand too well. It’s glaringly obvious, and Tooru might get upset, or afraid, he hates hospitals, he hates medical personnel, and he hates that his biomagnetism has taken over their lives. Obviously Hajime would prefer that Tooru was healthy and normal, for Tooru’s own sake, but Hajime is more than willing to dedicate his life to figuring out how to help him. Not because it’s Hajime’s responsibility. More because it’s the only thing he can imagine being passionate about for the rest of his life—Tooru. 

  


And now Hajime’s allowed to commit himself to Tooru in a way he never could before. It’s him who strokes Tooru’s hair while Tooru falls asleep, him who smooths away the knots in Tooru’s hands after a hard practice, him who holds Tooru’s face and whispers, harshly, “You’re a good person, Tooru, you’re good,” when Tooru comes home, broken and quiet, from the lab. 

  


Hajime is allowed to  _ love _ him, and God, it’s all he wants to do for his whole life. 

  
  


* * *

  


The closer they get to the Inter-High Prelims, the later Tooru wants to stay at the gym, practicing, but Hajime still manages to curb him. He’s not going to have either of them collapsing of exhaustion in front of Karasuno. Hajime already knows, from spending too long in that damn groupchat, that Suga would never let them hear the end of it. 

  


One night Hajime’s watching Tooru serve, long after everyone else has gone home, and he’s thinking that he’ll give Tooru five more serves before he makes them leave, and maybe when they get home, he’ll make Tooru take a hot bath to soothe his muscles. It’s a Saturday, and they have Sundays free, so Tooru has plenty of time to relax tomorrow, and something has been off about his playing today. He’s been distracted, wound up. There’s something heightened about his biomagnetism. 

  


Tooru lands hard, his knees bending, and Hajime is on his feet immediately. Not five more serves, then. 

  


“C’mon, Trashykawa,” he says, his voice ringing through the empty gym. “Time to go.” 

  


Tooru looks over his shoulder, making a face at Hajime, but Hajime just folds his arms, and after a moment Tooru sighs and obeys. They gather up the balls together, and Hajime tries to puzzle through the restless feeling in Tooru’s biomagnetic field. He’s inclined to think it’s just the nerves of the upcoming Preliminaries, but it’s different from his normal pre-game anxiety, something a touch more—personal. 

  


It’s not until they’re safely in the locker room, under the bright lights and the cool fans, and Hajime is stripping off his jersey and stretching out his arms, that the feeling rises to a new intensity. 

  


Hajime pauses, one hand still shoving his jersey into his gym bag. Tooru is sitting on the bench, fully clothed with his shoes neatly next to him, but he’s staring openly at Hajime, his eyes wide. Hajime meets his gaze and feels his throat go dry, the electric charge in the air making him hyper aware of the sweat coating his chest and arms. Tooru’s eyes drag down from his face over his neck, where he sucked a bruise into Hajime’s collarbone just last week, and down further, over Hajime’s ab muscles, and hovering around where Hajime’s practice shorts hang low on his hips, enough to expose the V-shaped lines of his hips. 

  


Hajime stares at Tooru staring at him. The tension isn’t just electric but hot, that restlessness rising into something like unabashed  _ want _ . Hajime can feel it burning into his own body, down to the pit of his stomach, making everything sweaty and stifling and a little too tight. 

  


“Tooru,” he says, and it comes out lower than he means it to, because his neck is starting to flush, and he’s not sure what he’s going to say, because this is—not exactly new, but stronger than it’s ever been before. Tooru’s eyes snap up to Hajime’s face again immediately, guilt coloring his cheeks. 

  


“Ah—I—” 

  


“What the fuck are you thinking about?” Hajime asks, even though he knows, he knows exactly what Tooru’s thinking about, it’s all laid out perfectly in his biomagnetic field, hot and obvious. Tooru is turned on, looking at him, and Hajime is beginning to feel turned on at the very feeling of Tooru’s arousal, the way it sits heavy and thick in the air. God. He’s thought about this—of course he has—about how sex would feel if just hugging felt like lighting his nerves on fire, but this is already so much stimulation, and Tooru’s not even  _ touching  _ him. 

  


Hajime is actually probably going to die. 

  


Tooru flushes, tearing his eyes away. “Nothing!” he says, voice rising on the obvious lie, and he presses his thighs together tightly. “I’m just—I’m—nothing. Nothing.” 

  


“Tooru.” 

  


Tooru shifts, and Hajime almost drops his bag and grabs his shoulders to haul him up, he wants to kiss Tooru breathless, but he forces himself to pause. If he puts his arms around Tooru’s, presses their chests together, presses their  _ hips  _ together, he’s going to—they’re never going to make it out of this building. The thought sends a hot thrill down Hajime’s body, and he has to take several moments to get himself back under control, adjusting the waistband of his shorts. 

  


They haven’t done this yet. Any of this. But  _ God  _ Hajime wants to. 

  


“I thought you said you were being careful not to look at me in the locker room,” says Hajime, and Tooru stiffens up, his ears red. 

  


“Yeah, I—!” 

  


“Is this why?” Hajime knows the answer but he asks anyway. There’s something so intoxicating about it, about being able to feel Tooru’s arousal like this, about knowing that Tooru’s turned on. Tooru can’t stop him from knowing. The biomagnetic field has never made Hajime feel so—so powerful before. 

  


Tooru puts his face into his hands, and a hot, pulsing embarrassment goes through the air, rocking through Hajime’s body, heating up his own face. It makes his armpits sweaty, his shorts uncomfortable, but he swallows and keeps watching Tooru, the red tips of his ears. Hajime is embarrassed too but it helps that he’s not as embarrassed as Tooru. It’s okay. Hajime will let him—Hajime will give him back the power, sometime soon, but not just yet. 

  


“Don’t make fun of me,” is what comes out of Tooru’s mouth, and Hajime drops his bag and moves closer, his hands itching to touch Tooru’s shoulder, but he holds himself back. 

  


“I’m not making fun,” he says. “It’s—it’s hot. You like me like this?” 

  


Tooru stays perfectly still, embarrassment still searing hot around his body, as if he’s radiating heat waves, and Hajime waits, sweat rolling down the side of his head from his damp hair. Finally Tooru peeks over his fingers, and his eyes are so huge, so dark, that it sends another shiver down Hajime’s spine. 

  


“Yes,” he whispers, and then clears his throat, a ripple going through his biomagnetic field like Tooru’s trying to collect himself. “You—you know what you look like, Iwa-chan.” 

  


“What do I look like?” 

  


The heat rises, and Tooru puffs out his cheeks, but Hajime doesn’t take the question back, partly because—well. He and Tooru don’t compliment each other all that often. It’s not part of the vocabulary of affection they’ve developed for each other over all these years, and Tooru has called Hajime ugly just as many times as he’s called him handsome, all in the same insincere, flippant tone. 

  


It’s not that Hajime thinks he’s ugly, it’s just—it would be nice to hear confirmation, that’s all. 

  


“You look like—” Tooru blows out air, his gaze dragging down from Hajime’s face to his chest again. “You look—so good. Iwa-chan, you know how good you look, you’re always pulling up your shirt on the court so I have to look at your abs, you’re always playing with me, I have to keep coming to the bathroom just so everyone won’t feel—this.” 

  


Hajime feels his bare skin prickle, the fans blowing cold air onto his sweaty back. He hadn’t known that. Suddenly he’s trying to remember every time that Tooru escaped off to the bathroom in the middle of a practice, every time that Hajime stripped off his practice clothes in front of him. How has Hajime been so dense? Tooru has literally been getting horny around him for years. 

  


“I’m not doing it on purpose,” he says, but Tooru just groans and buries his face in his hands again. 

  


“That makes it worse!” 

  


Hajime doesn’t know what to say to that. He could step away and give Tooru a chance to cool off, let the biomagnetism fade away into something less intense, but Hajime doesn’t want to. He wants to poke the fire until it grows and grows, hotter and hotter until it consumes both of them. So he puts his hand on the top of Tooru’s head, slowly, sinking his fingers into Tooru’s thick, soft hair and tugging gently to tip his head up. 

  


Tooru lets his hands slip down his face as Hajime lifts his head, his eyes impossibly wider. His eyelashes flutter slightly, and something dark and heady goes shivering through the air, and Tooru whimpers quietly, a muffled sound, and Hajime feels so hot he might explode. 

  


“We’re going home,” Hajime says, his voice scratching on the words with the effort of pulling his hand out of Tooru’s hair. He doesn’t want to let go—he wants to fist Tooru’s head and pull his head up so that Hajime can seal his hot mouth over Tooru’s open mouth, he wants to put Tooru’s hands on his bare hips. He wants to know what the burning biomagnetism feels like when it comes in direct contact with Hajime’s skin. 

  


The specialists warned Hajime about the danger of the biomagnetic field, but no one has ever warned him about  _ this _ .

  


* * *

  


They stumble home through the cold, but it doesn’t dull the bright flush on Hajime’s body, his chest naked under his jacket, the jacket Tooru has stolen and worn too many times to count,  _ Iwaizumi  _ branded across his back. Seeing him like that has always made Hajime’s stomach tie itself up in knots, and it’s not unlike how he feels right now, hurrying up Tooru’s front steps behind him, fumbling to kick off his shoes in the foyer. 

  


They trip over each other getting up the stairs, and Tooru’s biomagnetic field has become tinged with desperation, like he can’t wait to get Hajime into his bed and get his hands up his shirt, his mouth on his neck, and Hajime grabs onto his arms the moment they get into his bedroom, kicking the door so that it bounces against the doorframe. 

  


Tooru groans, and Hajime hisses out a growl, detaching himself for the two seconds it takes to shove the door closed, and then he grabs Tooru again and they tumble into the bed together, a tangle of arms and legs and Tooru’s teeth catching on Hajime’s shoulder, Hajime’s fingers snagging in his hair. 

  


For a minute it’s nothing but white-hot euphoria, Hajime’s body covering Tooru’s on the mattress, every part of them touching through their clothes, Hajime’s thighs sliding in between Tooru’s thighs, Tooru’s legs parting deliciously for Hajime’s body as he whines, high-pitched and loud. Hajime hitches himself up on the bed, elbows braced on either side of Tooru’s head, and ducks to kiss him, wet and sloppy. 

  


Tooru’s mouth is hot, so hot. Everywhere that his limbs press against Hajime feels tingly and sensitive, especially where their chests grind together, Tooru’s heart pulsing out of his own ribs and into Hajime’s body. Hajime’s teeth dig into Tooru’s bottom lip and Tooru cries out, arching up against Hajime, his fists catching in the back of Hajime’s jacket, and Hajime pulls away, gazing down at Tooru’s kiss-wet lips, his flushed face. 

  


“Haji,” Tooru gasps, yanking at the shirt clumsily, and Hajime knows this is already beyond just a heated makeout session. He can’t stop—he doesn’t want to, he wouldn’t stop for the world. 

  


“Do you want—”

  


“Do  _ you  _ want,” Tooru interrupts, and Hajime groans, canting his hips forward so his cock grinds against the front of Tooru’s shorts, and he can feel that Tooru’s hard, too, and it’s enough to take the breath right out of Hajime’s lungs. 

  


“Of course I want it,” Hajime rasps, and Tooru whines again, his beautiful hair a mess around him, his hands still tugging uselessly at Hajime’s jacket. 

  


“Can you—take off—”

  


Hajime sits up, grabbing the zipper of his jacket and yanking it down, just focused on getting the jacket off his body as fast as possible, but Tooru stares at him like he’s doing a striptease, like he hasn’t seen Hajime half-naked a million times, his pupils blown so wide his eyes are nearly black. When Hajime throws the jacket away and leans forward again, his cock brushes Tooru’s through their shorts, and Tooru turns his face into his pillow to stifle his groan. 

  


Hajime swallowed back his own moan. “I should’ve known you’d be loud,” he manages, his throat dry and raspy, the heat from Tooru’s body curling up and wrapping around his limbs. He feels like he’s going to come just from the panting breaths rocking through the entire room, and he has to lift up his hips until they’re no longer touching, hovering over Tooru’s body. 

  


“Haji,” Tooru whimpers, his voice cracking, trying to lift his hips to meet Hajime’s again, “don’t tease, please, don’t tease.” 

  


His voice, all wrecked like that, only makes Hajime’s body hotter. “I don’t know,” says Hajime, tugging Tooru’s shirt up so it’s caught under his arms, running his hand open-palmed down Tooru’s chest. Tooru’s skin is smooth and perfect, a small heart-shaped birthmark under his ribcage, his lopsided nipples dusky and pink, but he’s warmest directly over his heart, and Hajime lets his hand linger there, feeling the  _ please please please  _ vibrate out of Tooru. Tooru stares up at him with desperate,  _ please Hajime  _ eyes, licking his bottom lip distractedly, and Hajime slowly lowers his body again, giving a shallow thrust against Tooru’s clothed cock that makes both of them shudder. “I think you like it.” 

  


“Hajime,” Tooru gasps. His thighs tremble on either side of Hajime’s hips, and then he squeezes them together, his firm, strong thighs squeezing Hajime’s body, thousands of fantasizes crashing into reality at once, and Hajime moans and collapses on top of Tooru completely. 

  


The shock of his bare chest against Tooru’s almost makes Hajime come, his cock pressed to the indent of Tooru’s smooth hip. And, ah, Hajime’s not going to last much longer, even though they just started, even though he meant to tease Tooru a lot more, tease out every whine and plea, take control of Tooru’s emotions so Tooru could just writhe on the bed and  _ feel.  _

  


“I love you,” Hajime manages, pressing his open mouth to Tooru’s neck and his cock to Tooru’s cock, and he feels the moan in Tooru’s throat as his hips thrust upward, sliding clumsily against Hajime’s, and he feels Tooru’s arousal building in the air, so intense it’s sinking into Hajime’s every pore, making heat pool in his stomach, making his cock swell, his hair sticking to his sweaty forehead. Hajime can hardly control his limbs anymore—he’s drunk on the feeling, on the heat coursing straight through Tooru’s cock into his own as Hajime thrusts against him. His head drops onto Tooru’s chest, and when he presses his mouth over Tooru’s heart, he feels Tooru’s hips jerk and a pulse of heat shoots through his biomagnetic field, and Hajime is gasping, body thrusting forward, and Tooru gasps “Haji—love—” and Hajime is coming, his eyes whiting out, his teeth pressing against Tooru’s breastbone. 

  


The orgasm pulses through him for a long time, and when Hajime comes back to himself, panting against Tooru’s sweaty chest, his hands caught in Tooru’s rucked-up short, the heat doesn’t fade. It keeps thumping through Hajime’s body like a second heartbeat, and he realizes Tooru is still thrusting his hips weakly against Hajime’s, making these pathetic little whimpering noises. His cock is painfully hard against Hajime’s thigh, and any embarrassment over coming first is quickly swept away by the desperation rising in Tooru’s biomagnetic field. 

  


The emotions are all over the place, unraveling—they’re no longer decipherable, they’re a mess, and Hajime’s head swims with another wave of heat when he realizes this is how Tooru’s biomagnetic field feels when he’s falling apart. 

  


“Tooru,” Hajime whispers, against his flushed-hot skin, and Tooru shudders, whimpering incoherently, and Hajime kisses him on the sternum and momentarily debates teasing more, but Tooru is dangerously close to the edge and Hajime really,  _ really  _ wants to feel him come to pieces, so he slips his hand between them and tugs at the waistband of Tooru’s shorts. “Okay?” 

  


Tooru half-sobs and nods furiously, trying to push up into Hajime’s hand, and Hajime hides his smile in Tooru’s chest, his body still tingling with the oversensitivity of his orgasm, of Tooru’s arousal still hot in his veins. He pushes Tooru’s shorts and underwear down just far enough to get a hand on his cock, which is hot and slippery, and the wave of heat that rolls over him make Hajime moan, his hips stuttering against Tooru’s firm thigh, and Tooru’s moan mingles with his own, his hands coming up to grip at Hajime’s hair. 

  


Tooru is making noise now—a blur of _haji haji haji_ _please_ —and Hajime twists his hand on Tooru’s cock, rubbing his thumb over the head and stuffing the knuckles of his other hand into his mouth so he can bite back the moans—he’s fantasized so much about touching Tooru like this, about the broken sound of his voice crying Hajime’s name, but he never thought to fantasize about the arousal bleeding into every corner of the room, the way he can _feel_ Tooru get closer and closer before, with a stifled cry of _Haji,_ he’s toppling over the edge, and Hajime

  


_ feels  _

  


everything. 

  


It’s like a second orgasm, too quick after his last one but overwhelmingly powerful, and Hajime’s brain is short-circuiting with the rush of blood to his head, and he can hear Tooru sobbing his way through his climax but Hajime’s biting on his own hand so hard he can feel his teeth rubbing against his bones, and  _ god,  _ god it’s everything, it’s incredible, he can  _ feel  _ the way he made Tooru feel, the hormones throbbing through Tooru’s body. 

  


When Hajime pulls his hand away, his body slumps boneless on top of Tooru’s, and he tries to breathe. 

  


God. 

  


His hand aches where he bit into the skin, but otherwise his body molds into Tooru’s, and Hajime closes his eyes and just feels the heartbeat that pounds through both of them. He can’t tell their bodies apart. Tooru’s chest heaves with aftershocks, but his biomagnetic field settles into something hazy and hot, and Hajime knows they’re sharing the exact same emotions. 

  


It was quick—it was much quicker than Hajime expected. But he doesn’t have room to feel embarrassed. He just sighs against Tooru’s chest and breathes him in, the familiar scent of his sweat, and marvels that no one else in the world will ever get to experience sex quite the way they do. The way Hajime does, with Tooru. For the first time in his life, Hajime doesn’t regret Tooru’s hyperactive biomagnetism. 

  


He tilts his head, after a long while of just breathing, and kisses one of Tooru’s pink nipples, the skin there impossibly soft. Tooru shivers, his hands twitching on the sheets, and Hajime rasps out, “That was a surprise.” 

  


“Which—” Tooru clears his throat, his eyes squinting open. “Which part?” 

  


All of it, Hajime thinks, even though he’s been thinking about getting Tooru off since this time last year. But he doesn’t want to explain the hundreds of nights he’s spent with his hand down his shorts, thinking about the smooth plane of Tooru’s stomach or his thighs squeezing Hajime’s body, so he just says, “I could feel—you know. When you—” 

  


“Oh my god,” groans Tooru, his head falling back against the pillows again. He looks gorgeous like this, his hair in tangled curls all around his face, his long eyelashes casting shadows down his beautifully flushed face, and Hajime thinks he must be a god of some kind, something for Hajime to worship. Those words get stuck in his throat, so he just kisses Tooru’s chest again. 

  


“It felt good,” Hajime says, just so Tooru knows. “It felt—God. It was incredible. You’re incredible, Tooru.” 

  


Tooru squirms a little, under him, but his trembly hands come up to tangle in Hajime’s short hair, smoothing it off his forehead. Without the medical gloves, Tooru’s hands are lovely and slender, so smooth to the touch, so warm. Hajime wants to kiss each of them. The post-orgasmic haze has made him sappier than usual, but at this point, he’s beyond caring. 

  


“Thank you,” says Tooru, impossibly softly, after a few moments. When he peeks at Hajime again, his cheeks are still flushed, but the embarrassment hovering around him is washed out by the overwhelming feeling of  _ love.  _

  


“I love you, too,” Hajime says, and Tooru laughs a little, all blushy and pretty, but Hajime means it in a way he can’t explain. Tooru tells him  _ I love you  _ all day with his overflowing emotions; Hajime wants to say it back just as often. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love the scene where tooru asks iwa if they're boyfriends, for some reason it is so genuinely funny to me and it reminded me why i love writing their dynamic so much. also..... i hope y'all enjoyed this chapter because that last was UNNECESSARILY difficult to write


	13. Chapter 13

That night Hajime sleeps better than he has all year, curled up against Tooru’s bare skin, and in the morning Tooru asks if they can shower together, and Hajime says yes. In the bathroom, when Hajime strips off his boxers, he catches Tooru staring at him and feels the same hot rush of emotion that he felt the time Tooru walked in on him showering. Except this time, Hajime says, “Like what you see?” and Tooru shoves him, into the wet tile wall of the shower, and they end up pressed up each other, their hot mouths sliding together under the water. 

This time Tooru puts his hand on Hajime and jerks him off while sucking on his neck, and Hajime lets his head fall back against the wall, hands scrabbling at Tooru’s perfect back. The orgasm is even better today, but Hajime still likes it best when Tooru comes while grinding against his thigh, his cries muffled by Hajime’s hand. The feeling that rolls over Hajime’s skin from being so exposed to the biomagnetic field is like nothing else he’s ever experienced. It’s otherworldly. Tooru is otherworldly. 

Now that they’ve started the day kissing, it’s like they can’t stop, and Hajime barely gets anything done all Sunday. They kiss while making breakfast and make out while pretending to study and they end up, eventually, on Tooru’s couch, with Tooru’s body draped over Hajime’s, lazily kissing his neck while they watch old sci-fi movies on the TV. 

Hajime pays more attention to Tooru than the movies, but by the time it’s dark outside and he wraps a blanket around both of them,Tooru puts in another movie that Hajime actually recognizes. He has a hazy memory of watching it once in Tooru’s bed, of the dark cloud hovering over their heads that night, the terror of the biomagnetic field beginning to come into focus. 

But tonight Tooru huddles into Hajime’s chest while the alien woman onscreen tells her human counterpart they can’t be together; they’re too different. Tooru kisses Hajime when the alien and her lover begin to embrace, and Hajime holds him tenderly, stroking his hair, and he thinks that those dark days are behind them. They’ve found each other. 

  
  


* * *

Of course, like everything good in Hajime’s life, the specialists keep nosing in where they don’t belong. 

It starts when Tooru begins to appear in magazines, his toothy smile and perfect hair alongside articles about the “up and coming faces of professional volleyball,” in advertisements for energy drinks and knee pads. Something about Tooru’s name blazoned in bright colors on these glossy pages sets the specialists on edge, and Hajime sees them holding the magazines among themselves and whispering under their breath. He sees them sitting in the back of the stands of their games, hovering in the peripheral when the reporters crowd Tooru afterward, shoving microphones into his face.

Although the specialists don’t follow Tooru to school everyday, or walk home with him and Hajime, Hajime has developed a sort of sixth sense that goes haywire whenever they appear in the general vicinity. He can feel instinctively when the specialists have snuck into the crowd of a practice match, when they’re lingering in the aisles of the convenience store while Tooru buys milk bread. 

It creeps Hajime out. 

And he knows it’s sinister, whatever has caused their increased snooping—he knows it’s tied to the way Tooru’s face has started appearing on TV all the time, the way teenage girls from Tokyo have made “stan accounts” for him, the way the name  _ Tooru Oikawa  _ suddenly means something outside their patient zero paperwork. 

Maybe they’re afraid that the further Tooru goes, the more people he can hurt; maybe they’re afraid they’ll no longer be able to contain his biomagnetic field. 

  
  


* * *

Before Hajime knows it, the Prelims are upon them, and Tooru begins to live and breathe volleyball again, forcing Hajime to stay up watching Karasuno and Shiratorizawa’s recorded games on repeat. Hajime finds himself praying that Kageyama will hurt himself; nothing serious or life-threatening, just a stubbed toe or an eye infection, something that will take him out of the game. 

It’s not because Hajime doesn’t think they can beat Kageyama. He knows they can beat Kageyama, even with his tiny orange partner. He and Tooru have watched enough of their games to have their plays memorized. 

No, it’s because Hajime doesn’t want Tooru and Kageyama on the court at the same time again, or even in the same building. Maybe Kageyama will get hurt again, although Hajime doesn’t really believe that—it’s been years since Tooru had an emotional outburst, and he’s learned to control his emotions since then, even during matches. But with Kageyama in the same vicinity, the specialists will be watching like hawks to see any slip-up. They’ll be watching for the moment Yahaba flinches away from Tooru at the net. They’ll be watching for the way Tooru refuses to shake Ushijima’s hand. They’ll be watching for the burst of emotion when another team scores on Seijoh. 

So on the bus ride to the preliminaries, Hajime sits by Tooru in the front of the bus and takes Tooru’s hand into his lap, peeling away the gray medical glove. “What are you doing, Iwa-chan?” asks Tooru, staring at him. There are dark circles under his eyes but a fresh, invigorating vibration in his biomagnetism—he’s excited, and it’s getting the whole team antsy, ready to be on the court. “You wanna hold my hand that badly?”

Hajime’s so used to Tooru making comments like this that he barely even reacts. “Shut up or I’m never touching you again,” he says, in a low voice so no one else can hear, and a shiver goes through the biomagnetic field before Tooru manages to rein it in. Of course it’s not true, but Tooru doesn’t know that Hajime likes the way it feels to touch Tooru even better than he likes being touched himself. 

With the medical glove lying on the seat between them, Hajime takes each of Tooru’s knuckles between his fingers and rolls them around. Tooru’s hands are how he works his magic on the court, and they’re one of the most precious parts of his body, especially since Hajime now knows how they feel trailing down his chest, his thighs. He wants to kiss Tooru, but they’re in public, so instead Hajime just massages his hands for the entire bus ride, watching Tooru’s face as the rain pours down outside.

He wants Tooru to remember, one last time before they step onto that court, that Hajime isn’t afraid of touching him. 

  
  


* * *

“Where’s loverboy?” asks Hanamaki, while he’s double-knotting his laces. Hajime doesn’t bother telling Hanamaki that it’s ridiculous to keep treating Hajime like Tooru’s babysitter—they can all feel his biomagnetism equally, for God’s sake—because he’s accepted that some things will never change. Hajime will always be known as the one who takes care of Tooru, and maybe someday, when he’s not so sick, Tooru can be known as the one who takes care of Hajime in return. 

But today Hajime just says, “Tooru went to give Sugawara something.”

“What, shit for not being the starting setter?” 

Hajime shrugs. He knows Tooru is off in the corner of the gym with Karasuno because he can feel the bare edge of his biomagnetism from here, and he’s pretty sure Tooru just wants to give Suga sex advice or something gross, so he’s not particularly worried. 

They’ve just watched Karasuno beat Datekou, which means they’re up against each other now, and after that—one of them will face Shiratorizawa. Hajime’s mind is stuffed full of volleyball, of different strategies and spikes, but it doesn’t stop him from peering up at the stands for the specialists. Hajime knows they’re here somewhere. He can feel it, as if the specialists have developed hyperactive biomagnetic fields too, after all that time around Tooru. 

“I don’t know why he keeps disappearing right before we have to play,” Matsukawa says. “I could use some of that energy right about now.”

Hanamaki hums an agreement—Tooru’s biomagnetic field has a way of tying them all together before a game—and Hajime nods along, keeping an eye on Tooru’s mood as he fishes around in his bag for Tooru’s muscle cream. He might need to ice his knee before they go on, or in between sets, and Hajime wants to be ready. They’ve spent months preparing for this day, and Hajime doesn’t want anything to mess it up, especially not—

Tooru’s biomagnetic field shifts abruptly. 

Hajime is standing up straight in an instant, looking wildly around the gym. Anxiety prickles across his skin—anxiety and nervous determination. Hanamaki and Matsukawa give him bemused looks, and Hanamaki says, “What’s got you so twitchy, Iwa?” 

“Did you feel that?”

“Feel what?”

“Tooru’s—Oikawa’s—”

“You’re the only one who can feel that from all the way over here,” says Matsukawa, sounding almost amused. “I swear you have, like, a twenty-foot radius on him.” 

Hajime doesn’t tear his eyes away from the Karasuno corner, where Suga and Daichi are walking away from their team to approach their coach, but his brain catches on what Matsukawa said. “Doesn’t everyone?”

Matsukawa gives a surprised sort of laugh. “No? Dude, I’m sure what you feel is way stronger than what we feel, it’s all that exposure to him getting to your head.” 

Hajime tries to process this new piece of information. All these years he’s assumed that everyone felt Tooru’s biomagnetism to the same caliber, that everyone has felt it getting stronger and stronger over the past few months. He’s never imagined that it’s only his own perception getting stronger, the closer he gets to Tooru, the most time they spend together. It makes his neck hot, and it’s somehow a relief, that no one else feels the same thrilling spark of white-hot electricity when Tooru touches them—

But Tooru is somewhere in this gym, his anxiety thudding solidly in Hajime’s chest, and Hajime has to find him before something goes wrong. 

He tosses his water bottle back into his gym bag and kicks it under the bench, ignoring whatever inane comment Hanamaki makes, and hurries across the gym. Suga waves to him, and Hajime barely remembers to lift his hand to wave back, the idea flashing through his head to stop and ask Suga what’s wrong—but Hajime doesn’t want to wait. He veers away from the Karasuno corner like his body is on autopilot, because Tooru’s biomagnetic field isn’t focused there anymore—it’s outside, somewhere in the halls, maybe in the bathroom. 

Hajime stops at the doors to the gym when he hears Tooru’s voice. 

“...and I don’t blame you for telling them,” Tooru is saying, his voice taut and guarded, trying to force his old bravado and condescension. “I’m only telling you not to trust them if they ask you again.” 

Hajime hears Kageyama then—of course he hears Kageyama. “I didn’t lie,” Kageyama says, gruffly. “They asked me what happened at Kitagawa, and I told them the truth, and then they sent me home.” 

“I know,” says Tooru. “I know that. I’m just saying. If you have something new to report about me, I can give you the number of my real doctors, the certified ones. Don’t go squealing to my specialists, okay? That’s all I’m asking.” 

“I don’t have anything new to report.” Kageyama sounds wary but brash at the same time, his same old stupid, overly brash self. “Did you do something to Hinata?” 

Tooru scoffs, and a ripple goes through his biomagnetic field. “So protective of Chibi-chan, aren’t we?” 

“Don’t call him that,” Kageyama snaps, and Tooru laughs an insincere laugh, like Kageyama has proven his point, whatever asshole point he meant to make, but then they go quiet again, and Hajime is about to go through the doors when Tooru speaks again. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice low. “You should know that, alright? I’m sorry for what happened. I’m sorry for what I did.” 

For a moment Hajime can’t hear anything. Then he hears Kageyama clear his throat, and he imagines that if he could feel Kageyama’s own biomagnetic field, it would be all muddled up, some tangle of embarrassment and anger and awkwardness and maybe even pity, if Kageyama has the emotional capacity to feel pity. 

“Are you only apologizing so I don’t go tattle to the specialists?” Kageyama demands, and Tooru laughs again, that laugh meant for other people, the one meant to deflect their attention away from his bleeding emotions. 

“Go ahead and believe that, Tobio,” he says. “It spares me a little pride, doesn’t it?”

Hajime grips the doorjamb. The tension in the hallway is obvious, like a forcefield keeping strangers away, and Hajime can feel the anxiety begin to ramp up in Tooru’s biomagnetism again. Tooru wants out. He wants to be away from Kageyama, he probably wants to never see Kageyama again, but he’s still out there, standing in front of Kageyama and apologizing. 

Maybe Tooru’s doing it for his own sake rather than Kageyama’s. Probably it will mean more to Tooru than it will ever mean to Kageyama. But he’s still  _ saying  _ it. 

“Well, I guess—okay,” says Kageyama, still awkward, but then he clears his throat again and his voice rises. “But I’m not scared of you anymore. Do you hear me? I’m not scared of you.” 

Kageyama means it as an insult, as a threat. But Hajime feels the sudden rush of relief roll through the room, he can feel the way that Tooru relaxes, a deep fear of his easing for the first time in so many years, and Hajime knows that it’s the greatest thing Kageyama could ever, ever tell him. 

* * *

  
  


And when they win, the feeling of Tooru’s biomagnetism is indescribable, crashing into Hajime as he flings himself at Tooru, Hanamaki and Matsukawa dogpiling into them. Everything is bursting with warmth, excitement, and Hajime is yelling so loud he can barely hear Matsukawa and Hanamaki shouting in his ears, and then the rest of the team is there, too, one big group hug, Tooru squished in the middle with his chest against Hajime’s. Hajime is buffering the biomagnetism with his body but he  _ knows  _ everyone can feel it, everyone in that whole gym can feel it, Tooru’s pure joy, and for once no one is afraid of touching him. Everyone is burning, together, in the same happiness. 

  
  


* * *

Tomorrow they’ll face Shiratorizawa, and Tooru doesn’t stop vibrating with anxiety the whole time they’re shaking hands with Karasuno—anxiety and excitement. They’re so close to Nationals. Hajime shakes hands with Kageyama and watches, out of the corner of his eye, as Kageyama hesitates and then puts his palm against the palm of Tooru’s gray medical glove. Their handshake is brief, but Tooru’s frequency rises, a kind of untamable high. 

When Suga reaches Tooru, he ducks under the net and hugs him, his skinny arms around Tooru’s shoulders, and Hajime can feel the surprise ripple through Tooru’s biomagnetic field before he hugs back. No one used to hug Tooru like that. In three years, no one but Hajime has hugged Tooru like that, unafraid of his heart, and Hajime can see the gratitude in Tooru’s face when they separate. Suga is saying something, a congratulations, with his hand on Tooru’s arm, and Hajime thinks of Suga’s fearless driving and unabashed teasing and thinks that Suga is the perfect friend for Tooru, the kind of person who finds the fun in danger, who is ready to take your side when everyone else has turned their backs. 

  
  


* * *

“Can you believe it, Iwa-chan?” Tooru says, for the millionth time that night. “We  _ won.  _ Did you see the look on Tobio’s face when we got that last point? I think I saw murder go through his mind.” 

Hajime would normally call Tooru out for having a horrible personality, but he  _ did  _ the furious look flash through Kageyama’s eyes, so he just laughs and indulges Tooru. “He can take your murder off my hands, then,” he says. “I was wondering when I would fit into my schedule.” 

“You couldn’t kill me, Iwa-chan,” says Tooru, snuggling deeper into him. They’re bundled up in the blankets on Hajime’s bed, although Hajime can feel—from the nerves vibrating in his biomagnetic field—that Tooru won’t be sleeping tonight. He’s always like this before an important match, and Hajime is beyond trying to fix it, but at least Tooru can rest his body while Hajiime sleeps. “You’d miss me too much.” 

“Mm,” says Hajime, kissing the top of his head. “Would I?” 

“Of course,” says Tooru. He shifts between Hajime’s legs, turning his body so he can peer up into Hajime’s face, his long eyelashes curling upward. “You love me.” 

Hajime smooths his bangs back, exposing his perfect eyebrows, and kisses his mouth, touching his tongue to Tooru’s bottom lip and sliding his hand down to cradle Tooru’s jaw. “I do love you,” he mumbles against Tooru’s skin, which smells delightfully like Hajime’s bodywash, and Tooru hums into his mouth. 

“I love you too.” 

It’s an incredible emotion to share, Hajime thinks, as Tooru pushes him backward against the mountain of pillows, his hands sliding down Hajime’s body. 

“Can I give you a massage?” Tooru asks, pushing up Hajime’s t-shirt, running his open palms over Hajime’s abs until Hajime shivers from the contact. “I need to make sure my Iwa-chan is in the best shape tomorrow. The team is relying on you.” 

The words make Hajime shiver again, something dark and hot curling in his stomach. Then Tooru whispers, “ _ I’m  _ relying on you,” and Hajime bites down hard on his lip, his hands finding Tooru’s hair, trying to stop himself from pulling it. 

It’s all Hajime wants. To be reliable. 

And, god, it feels good when Tooru gives him that perfect little smile, stretching up to kiss Hajime’s mouth, like Tooru trusts Hajime to be reliable, to be the rock of the team tomorrow, someone they can all depend on. 

“My legs are a little sore,” Hajime says, his voice embarrassingly raspy, and Tooru nods and smiles knowingly, kissing him again before sliding down the bed, parting Hajime’s legs to fit himself in between them. It’s a position Tooru is usually in, on his back with his legs around Hajime while Hajime touches him, and it’s a little too vulnerable for Hajime, but he takes a deep breath and tries to relax. It’s just Tooru, and Hajime knows Tooru would never hurt him. 

Hajime props his head up against the pillows so he can watch Tooru, with his nightshirt slipping off one of his shoulders, as Tooru moves Hajime’s feet apart and begins to rub at one of his calves. His fingers are long and deft, one of them taped up from a bad receive earlier, and every time the edge of the tape brushes against Hajime’s skin, he shivers. He knows Tooru can feel each shiver, but Hajime pushes down the embarrassment. He wants to be vulnerable for Tooru, the way Tooru is for him. 

Tooru works steadily, massaging away the aches in Hajime’s calves, his hair falling messily into his eyes. Tooru’s pregame nerves are still jittering around the room, but the longer they breathe together in the silence, the more Hajime relaxes, and the more he can feel the deep contentment settling into Tooru’s biomagnetic field. 

Tooru rubs his thumbs over the bones in Hajime’s knees, gazing down at him, and something warm prickles in Hajime’s cheeks. Slowly, Tooru slides his hands up Hajime’s inner thighs, his hot palms spreading over the sensitive skin there, and Hajime shivers again, biting on the inside of his cheek. Tooru laughs quietly, breathlessly. 

“You’re so sensitive, Hajime,” he says, a lilting sing-song in the way he says Hajime’s name:  _ Ha-ji-me.  _ Hajime shifts on the mattress, trying to ignore the flush on his face, moving his legs so that Tooru’s hands slide even further up. Tooru laughs again. “So impatient.” 

The dark, hot thing curls in Hajime’s stomach again. “I’m not—” he starts, but it dies when Tooru brushes his thumbs just under the hem of Hajime’s boxers. Tooru’s touch is so light but Hajime can feel the electricity at his fingertips and it makes him want those hands all over him, hard and heavy. He fights to keep his composure steady, taking a breath before he says, instead, “Do that again.” 

“What?” asks Tooru, brushing his thumbs even higher up, so that Hajiime’s breath catches. “This?” 

“Asshole,” Hajime says, voice wavering, because he wants  _ more,  _ goddammit, he wants Tooru’s hot hands underneath his clothes, on his cock, but instead Tooru pulls them away, sliding his palms down to Hajime’s knees again. 

“Hush, Iwa-chan,” Tooru whispers, when Hajime makes an aborted sound of protest. “Let me finish your massage first. Remember, we have to be able to depend on our ace tomorrow.” 

Hajime shuts his mouth, the heat rising in his chest, curling his toes. Tooru resumes carefully kneading Hajime’s muscles, his hands working their way up his thighs, tortuously slowly. Hajime can feel the warmth building in Tooru’s frequency, too, the nerves giving way to another kind of excitement, and fuck, it makes Hajime squirm even more. He watches the way Tooru licks his bottom lip as he slides his hands centimeters closer to the bottom of Hajime’s boxers, and suddenly Hajime is thinking about Tooru’s mouth, his full lips, the heat whenever he licks into Hajime’s mouth, and god, that tight heat on his cock—

Hajime shifts his hips, and Tooru blinks up at him innocently, toying with the hem of Hajime’s boxers again. 

“You want to take these off, Haji?” he breathes, and Hajime’s lifting his hips before Tooru’s even done speaking, his face hot and his breathing heavy, and sure, he’s embarrassed, but the thought of Tooru  _ touching  _ him overwhelms all other emotions. Tooru laughs a little, but his cheeks are pink and Hajime can  _ feel  _ that Tooru’s turned on, too, as he hooks his fingers into the waistband of Hajime’s boxers and tugs them down. 

Hajime’s face burns when his cock bounces free, already flushed and swollen, but then Tooru pushes his tongue into the corner of his lips and Hajime’s whole  _ body  _ burns. Tooru scrambles to pull his boxers further down, but instead of touching Hajime’s cock, he just rests his hands on Hajime’s bare thighs, squeezing, and Hajime fights for air. “Don’t tease,” he manages, but Tooru just squeezes again, fingers pressing into the creases where Hajime’s thighs meet his hips. 

“Stop, let me appreciate,” Tooru says, staring down at him, and Hajime swallows hard at the pretty flush on Tooru’s face, his heavy-lidded eyes. When Hajime’s eyes slide down past Tooru’s loose t-shirt, past the bite marks on his collarbones, he can see that Tooru’s hard, too. “Did you know I stare at your thighs  _ so much  _ while you’re practicing, Iwa-chan? I think about them  _ all the time.  _ Whenever I used to watch those massage videos, I would always watch the leg parts, just to pretend I was touching you—” he squeezes Hajime’s thighs— “like  _ this. _ ”

Hajime’s throat is dry. He’s never considered that Tooru might look at him with the same kind of yearning that Hajime feels. “You—” he clears his throat, tries again. “You can touch all you want.” 

“I will,” Tooru whispers, and then he bends down to kiss Hajime while massaging at the muscles in his thighs, and Hajime is breathless with the thought of Tooru staring at him on the volleyball court, imagining dirty things. Tooru slides his body down the sheets, leaning his weight on Hajime’s legs, until he’s settled with his face dangerously close to Hajime’s cock, but he still doesn’t touch it. Instead, he kisses the crease of Hajime’s hip, latching his mouth onto the skin at the top of his thigh, sucking hard. 

Hajime lets out a sound halfway between a gasp and a groan, letting his head fall back against the pillows, as Tooru bites hickeys into the sensitive skin of his inner thigh, parting Hajime’s thighs further. It’s embarrassing, to have Tooru’s face so close, but the burn on Hajime’s face is a good burn, and when Tooru laves his tongue over the bite marks, Hajime groans again. 

“You like that?” Tooru whispers against him, and Hajime shivers and tries to mumble an affirmative, but his brain is scrambled, and he’s not sure how to form the words that will make Tooru keep going. He’s so hard it hurts, his cock straining against his stomach, and with the rising heat of Tooru’s biomagnetism, he’s beginning to feel a little worried that he’ll come untouched, and Tooru will never let him hear the end of—

Tooru moves his face up, licks at Hajime’s cock, and the space in front of Hajime’s eyes whites out. 

All Hajime can manage is a moan, one hand tangling in Tooru’s soft hair, but he’s thinking  _ Tooru Tooru Tooru god please Tooru,  _ and Tooru must understand, because he shifts his weight onto his elbows and leans down to kiss the head of Hajime’s cock. His mouth is just as soft and wet as Hajime imagined, and Tooru hums against his cock, sending shivers all through Hajime’s body. 

“You’re so beautiful,” Tooru mumbles against him, and Hajime moans again, partly from the words and partly from the way Tooru mouths at his tip, touching his tongue to his cock and then parting his soft, plush lips to take it into his mouth. 

Hajime nearly sobs. It’s as if someone has pressed an electric wire to his skin, too overwhelming to feel good, but only for a moment, and then all he can feel is the tight heat of Tooru’s mouth swallowing half of Hajime’s cock. Hajime’s hand tugs at Tooru’s hair and Tooru shifts, Hajime’s cock pressing into the inside of his cheek obscenely, and then Tooru pulls off with another kiss and asks, “Is that good?” 

“Uhhhh,” is all Hajime can manage, but then he swallows and rubs his mouth and tries to form coherent words for Tooru. The words are important to Tooru. “Ah, uh, god, Tooru, please—”

“Please?”

“Please keep going,” Hajime gets out, and Tooru hums, his own arousal swelling around Hajime as he lowers his head to tongue along the side of his cock, sliding his mouth up and down, kissing him, petting his thighs. 

“So beautiful, Haji,” he sighs against him, licking at the head of Hajime’s cock. “So beautiful, all for me.” 

Hajime’s mouth works around words, nearly losing them when Tooru swallows his head into his gorgeous mouth again. He squeezes his eyes open to see the mess of Tooru’s hair, Hajime’s own fingers tangled in his curls, and the fan of Tooru’s eyelashes as he tries to fit more of Hajime’s cock into his mouth. Hajime nearly bucks his hips up into Tooru’s face, but Tooru’s hands are still on his thighs, stroking his skin, holding him down, and Hajime lets his head fall back again, gasping out, “Love you.” 

The heat in the room spikes and Tooru moans around his cock, his throat working in a way that makes Hajime’s eyes roll back, and Tooru pulls away with a wet mouth to rasp, “I love you more.” 

“No,” protests Hajime, but then Tooru is swallowing his cock again, and Hajime can only gasp, “Tooru, Tooru,” and “oh god please,” as Tooru hollows his cheeks and  _ sucks,  _ and it’s messy and clumsy but Tooru’s hot palms are branding handprints into Hajime’s thighs, his mouth soft  _ so soft  _ and the air around them building with his desperation, his growing arousal and his  _ love,  _ oh god his love. 

Hajime feels Tooru shift to grind against his leg, a stutter going through Tooru as he chokes on Hajime’s cock, and suddenly Hajime is coming, his hands scrambling at Tooru’s hair, his hips jerking messily into Tooru’s mouth, his mouth gasping for the warning, too late. 

Tooru swallows around him and Hajime nearly comes again, his whole body twitching, and it’s not only Tooru lifts his head and says, hoarse, “Don’t cry, Hajime,” that Hajime realizes his own face is wet from the overstimulation. 

It should be humiliating, he should feel humiliated lying here sprawled on the mattress, his body limp and fucked out, his brain incoherent with tears sliding out of his eyes. It’s the most vulnerable he’s ever been, but Hajime doesn’t feel embarrassment, only a haze of euphoria and, underneath, a crawling desperation to get Tooru off. 

It doesn’t take long. Tooru lifts his body up and grinds against Hajime’s thigh until he comes with a whine, his head tossed back, the long, graceful line of his body completely exposed to Hajime, handing him back that vulnerability. The rush of his orgasm feels as mind blowing as ever, and Hajime moans along with Tooru, thinking dimly that he’ll never, ever tire of this. 

Tooru collapses on top of him afterward, the sheets a mess beneath them, and his body is so hot that Hajime feels as though he’s swaddled in a heated blanket, maybe a furnace. It’s heaven. Tooru begins to mouth at Hajime’s neck, not enough to leave marks, just enough to connect them, Tooru’s soft mouth luring Hajime in and out of sleep. 

“Wanna do that to you,” Hajime mumbles eventually, his body impossibly heavy among the pillows. He’s nearly asleep but it’s an important sentiment to express. He wants to feel Tooru squirm while Hajime has his mouth full of Tooru’s cock. “Can I? Soon?” 

“Mm,” Tooru says, laying his head on Hajime’s chest. Everything is fading in and out, warm and heavy and sweet, and into his heart, Tooru whispers,“Take me to Nationals, Hajime, and then you can do anything you want.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all i am SO SORRY i promise the rest of this fic will not be just porn...,,, they are excited about each other right now but there IS still plot left!!!! things have to get worse before they can get better....right??


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for the implied medical abuse tag

Ushijima isn’t an emotional player, and this, Hajime thinks, is his downfall. 

Shiratorizawa has the best lineup in the prefecture, maybe in all of high school volleyball, but they don’t have Tooru Oikawa, who spends time with his players until he understands their feelings as deeply as they understand his. Tooru has his bond with Hajime, of course, setter and spiker, but he has a bond with everyone else, too. Seijoh is a family. There’s Matsukawa and Hanamaki’s secret handshake, and Kindaichi’s awe of Hajime, and Yahaba and Kyoutani’s love-hate tension, and in the center of it all is Tooru, his hands spinning the volleyball, like the beating heart of the whole team. 

Around the middle of the second set Hajime feels it settle into his bones. They’re in a time-out huddle, and everyone has their arms around each other’s circles so that Tooru’s energy travels like electricity around a circle, continuous and constant, and Hajime meets his eyes across the circle. 

Tooru is panting, sweat running down the side of his face, and through his biomagnetic circuit runs a conviction that Hajime believes immediately. 

They’re going to win. 

* * *

  
  


“Tooru Oikawa,” booms the announcer, and it’s all Hajime hears rising about the chaos, over and over again,  _ Tooru Oikawa, Tooru Oikawa, Tooru Oikawa,  _ from all around them—

“Oikawa, how does it feel to lead your team to Nationals for the first time in—”

“Tooru Oikawa! Have you committed to a university team?” 

“Oikawa-san! A word!” 

“Tooru Oikawa, the captain of Aoba Johsai’s winning team—” 

“Oikawa! What do you have to say to your adoring fans?” 

The reporters are crowding Tooru, trying to get close to him, shoving their microphones toward his face, and the adrenaline and excitement is thrumming in Hajime’s ears. He and Matsukawa and Hanamaki are standing around Tooru, holding the reporters at bay. Hajime knows Tooru is afraid of crowds, but as long as they stay a few feet away, Tooru is his same old charming self, his smile glowing, TV-ready, his voice rising clear and perfect over everyone else’s.

“I couldn’t have done it without my team!” he says. “It’s our win. We’re a unit.” 

“How does it feel to have finally beat Shiratorizawa?” 

“This is your first time going to Nationals, how does it feel?” 

“How does it feel?” “How does it feel?” “How does it feel?” —and Hajime can’t fight his grin at the question, keeping his shoulder pressed to Tooru’s chest to make sure no one gets too close to his heart, because isn’t it ironic? People asking Tooru how it  _ feels,  _ as if his joy isn’t burning through the gym, as if Tooru hasn’t spent his entire life trying to  _ hide _ how things feel. 

Tooru doesn’t seem to mind the questions, though. He keeps giving the perfect responses, his voice loud and clear, and the reporters eat them up, clambering. They behave as if Tooru is the entire Seijoh team, but Hajime doesn’t mind. Tooru’s used to the spotlight, and this is good attention, the kind that makes him glow. Hajime’s okay with being his bodyguard. He’ll be okay with being Tooru’s bodyguard for the rest of their lives, if that’s what it comes to. 

But Tooru keeps saying, “None of us could have done it without the whole team,” and then, after one shouted question that Hajime can’t make out, he says, “I couldn’t have done it without Hajime! My ace.” 

It’s Hajime’s given name in front of everyone, in front of dozens of flashing cameras, but Hajime doesn’t mind. It makes him feel warm, the way the reporters clamber louder, and he leans back just a little, into Tooru’s burning body. Hajime has never felt more powerful, more dependable, more like the rock of the team. 

“I asked Hajime to take us to Nationals,” Tooru says, “and he did it! I owe him everything.” 

The reporters turn their cameras on Hajime, and Hajime laughs sheepishly, the sound drowned by the chaos, and he tries to think of something to say, something that will sound good on the news when they play these clips later, but Hajime’s just as clumsy with words as always, and that’s okay. That’s why he leaves the TV to Tooru. Everything is bright and loud around him when he says, “It was mostly Tooru.” 

“Was not!” 

“It was all of us,” Hajime says, but Tooru laughs behind him, and when it reverberates through his chest into Hajime’s body, Hajime can’t help laughing, too. He turns his head just a little to look into Tooru’s face, and Tooru’s cheeks are pink and his eyes are shining and for a moment he looks so kissable that Hajime thinks of doing it—kissing him in front of everyone, letting everyone see how much Hajime loves him, how lovable Tooru is, how perfect. Hajime wants to show them how it  _ feels.  _

He doesn’t, because he can’t do something like that in front of all these cameras without asking Tooru first, but Tooru’s biomagnetism pulses with love just as if Hajime had. 

* * *

  
  


They save the kissing for the locker room, after the rest of the team has headed off for the vending machine or back out to the reporters. The moment Yahaba has let the door swing shut behind himself, Tooru is all over Hajime, his hands looped around Hajime’s neck, their chests pressed together so Hajime can both hear and feel Tooru’s laugh-crying against his neck. 

“Shh,” Hajime says, but he doesn’t mean it. He holds Tooru’s body close, the giddiness heady in his brain. Tooru pulls back, his face shining with the happy tears, his joy flowing into Hajime’s chest. “We did it,” Hajime says, and Tooru laughs, his face red and happy, so happy that Hajime rises up on his tip-toes with the excitement of all of it. 

“ _ You  _ did it,” says Tooru, so happy and real and sincere that Hajime knows he means it, he truly trusts Hajime to win Nationals, as if Tooru isn’t the shining star of their team. Tooru trusts  _ Hajime  _ to do it. Hajime feels that surge of euphoric power again, that  _ sureness,  _ like he can do anything, anything at all. 

He grabs Tooru’s face and slants their mouths together, and Tooru responds so enthusiastically that Hajime’s panting in less than a minute, Tooru’s hands on his shoulders, clinging to him. Hajime’s still on his toes, their noses bumping with the enthusiasm of their kissing, and Tooru’s mouth is hot and wet and when he licks against Hajime’s teeth, Hajime squeezes him so close that for a moment neither of them breathe. 

Then their mouths slide apart and they laugh against each other, foreheads pressed together, and Hajime shifts his grip on Tooru’s waist so that he can grab one of Tooru’s hands. He brings Tooru’s fingers up to his mouth, squished between their bodies, and Tooru blinks at him in surprise. Hajime catches the tip of Tooru’s glove between his teeth and tugs, and the finger of the glove begins to pull away from Tooru’s hand. Tooru laughs but lets him, and when Hajime wiggles the glove off Tooru, he looks up at Tooru’s eyes and sees his eyes sparkling, the kind of pure childish joy that Hajime hasn’t seen in years, maybe since they were children, with no concept of gloves or labs or biomagnetism, and then Tooru is kissing him again, his mouth soft and perfect against Hajime’s lips, and—

“Tooru Oikawa.” 

The name rings through the locker room, loud and sharp. 

It doesn’t sound like his name did earlier. 

Hajime lets his head fall backward as Tooru pulls away—for a moment Hajime feels confused. He doesn’t know who’s speaking, and it feels like slow motion as Tooru scrambles to get his entire body away from Hajime’s. Hajime’s hand comes up automatically to rub at his mouth before his eyes catch on the figures at the door, and then his body freezes, cold against the lockers at his back. 

The specialists. 

The specialists have seen. 

Hajime blinks and the man is closer than before, bigger, his arm swinging out to crush one of Tooru’s elbows in his grip, and then the specialists are grabbing Tooru and forcing him bodily away from Hajime. Hajime’s ears are going numb again, blocking out the sound, but he can hear Tooru’s voice over the rushing— “Stop!” Tooru’s yelling, “Let go!” but the specialists don’t listen. Tooru’s eyes catch onto Hajime’s, wild and pleading, his whole body struggling, but the man is strong, too strong. He wrangles Tooru away, pinning down his writhing limbs, and it’s all happening in flashes too quick for Hajime to process. In a moment Hajime blinks again and the man has the door open, and then Tooru’s feet are pushing vainly at the doorjamb, and then they’re gone, and Hajime can’t make sound, can barely hear. 

The woman is holding the door open. Her light hair is silhouetted in the light of the gym outside, but her eyes are shuttered. The silence rings through the locker room. 

When she speaks, it sounds far, far away. 

“It’s not real, Iwaizumi,” she says, and in her voice is the first emotion she’s ever shown: pity.

* * *

Hajime doesn’t remember what happens next. He’s fucked up, he registers dimly, when he comes to and he’s sitting on the floor with bloody knuckles and several dented lockers in front of him. One of the locker doors has been crushed in entirely. The specialists have been wrong all along; it’s not Tooru who’s dangerous. It’s Hajime. Hajime and his anger. 

Anyone who thinks that Tooru could hurt Hajime is insane. 

Slowly Hajime gets to his feet. His head is still buzzing, stuffed full of cotton like he’s getting a cold. The specialists came and saw him and Tooru making out and now they’re dragging Tooru back to the lab. The specialists probably think it’s Sana all over again. They’re going to give Tooru new rules.  _ Don’t touch Hajime. Don’t show affection to Hajime. Don’t get within fifty feet of Hajime, in case he feels that you love him and gets it into his idiotic pathetic head that he loves you, too.  _

It’s insanity. It’s absolute insanity. 

Hajime takes a quick breath and feels the anger rear back to life. The specialists know nothing about him and Tooru. Long before the specialists came along, there was Hajime-and-Tooru, and long after the specialists are gone there will still be Hajime-and-Tooru. Hajime is never going to stop loving Tooru, and he’s not going to sit around and let the specialists convince Tooru that it’s not real. He thinks of Tooru telling him about the simulations they forced him to watch—he thinks of Tooru’s broken voice when he said,  _ “It’s me hurting you.”  _

Hajime clenches his fists so hard he can feel the split skin at his knuckles pulling apart, but the pain feels good. It gives him the energy to heave his body toward the door, kick his way through it. 

He’s already running down the road, past all the buses, with his jacket flapping open around his body, the warm spring air whipping at his face, that he realizes the lab is too far away to run to. The specialists must have brought their car, and for a moment Hajime pulls up short, grinding his jaw closed. He’ll have to—he’ll have to find the train station. But it will take too long. Tooru is probably already at the lab, and maybe they’re sedating him, maybe they’re putting him back onto the meds, maybe they’re hooking him up to the simulations so Tooru will have to watch himself hurt Hajime over and over again and—and—and—

Hajime can’t. He can’t let them torture Tooru. He  _ won’t.  _

Hajime spins around, nearly twisting his ankle on the rough road beneath him, and stares through the crowds of students milling outside the gym, as if an angel will appear among them and tell Hajime what to do. 

Hajime must have done something right, in a past life, maybe even in this life, because his eyes snag on a cluster of orange jackets and the angel appears. 

Hajime’s running again before he can think twice, running back the way he came, feet skidding on the gravel as laughter rises above the Karasuno third years, who are making their easy way across the parking lot. They’re wearing jeans and their stupidly bright Karasuno fleeces, and between the taller boys is Suga, his hair silver-white against the bright sky. Suga, Tooru’s enabler,  _ Hajiime _ ’s enabler, the only savior they need. 

“Suga,” Hajime gasps out, and the third-years all look up at the same time, and Hajime doesn’t know how to explain but he can see right away that Suga understands. His hand tightens on his car keys, and Hajime says, his voice loud and shaky, “I need—I need a ride.” 

  
  


* * *

Asahi and Daichi sit quietly in the backseat, holding on for dear life as Suga rips through traffic, weaving through the other cars, flooring the gas pedal whenever the road opens up. Hajime doesn’t hold onto anything. He lets his body knock into the door over and over again, the pain keeping him in the present, keeping his split knuckles in his lap so he doesn’t get blood on any of Suga’s upholstery. 

All he can see is those same flashes of the specialists dragging Tooru out of the locker room, replaying like a film reel in his head. It had happened so fast. Hajime hadn’t realized the man was so strong; it was the first time he had seen the specialists physically restrain Tooru. 

Tooru's limbs struggling, the panic on his face, the man’s hands on Tooru’s upper arms like Tooru’s a criminal—

Hajime can’t take it anymore. 

Suga turns a sharp corner that throws them all heavily against the car doors, and Asahi groans, and without taking his eyes off the road Suga asks, “This is it, right?” 

The abandoned business complex is as dreary and empty as Hajime remembers it. He nods, eyes searching for the correct building—they all look the same, but Hajime would remember those boarded up windows anywhere. Tooru shared his location with Hajime’s phone after the emergency room situation and for the first time Hajime is making use of it. 

“He’s inside?” Suga asks, skidding into a parking space in front of the blank front of the building, but Hajime’s already halfway out of the car, jumping onto the concrete before the car has stopped moving, stumbling. “Hey!” Suga calls, but Hajime’s not waiting for him, he’s not waiting for anyone, he’s only thinking about getting to Tooru as fast as possible and getting him far, far away from here. He runs up to the front door, but it’s locked, and even when Hajime throws his entire weight against it, it doesn’t open. 

He sees red, and the next thing he knows Suga is grabbing his arm, stopping him from throwing his fist directly through the glass.

“There has to be another door,” Suga says, “or a window, god, I don’t know.” 

“We have to get inside,” Hajime spits. “Right now.” 

“I know,” says Suga, and Hajime doesn’t know how much he knows, how much Tooru has told him about the lab, but it doesn’t matter, nothing matters right now except getting Tooru out of there. 

Asahi and Daichi have gotten out of the car, too, but Hajime barely sees them. Everything is a blur, and the grass on the side of the building scratches at his feet as he stalks along the wall, searching for a weak spot, any kind of entrance. There—at the back corner of the office—another door. 

This time when Hajime throws himself against the door, he feels something give, and instead of pulling him back this time, Suga says, “Hang on, let me help.” They shove all their weight against the flimsy metal, and after some groaning, something snaps and the door falls open. 

Hajime scrambles to his feet, staring wildly inside. It’s a back room, unlit and lined with filing cabinets, and it smells like dust and aerosol spray. Suga crowds in behind Hajime, and then one of the others is dragging the door closed behind them. Hajime searches desperately for Tooru’s biomagnetic field, but he can’t feel it—maybe they’ve already sedated him. Maybe they’ve put him under anesthesia or something. Maybe they’re erasing his emotions, his memories, any recollection he has of Hajime, the entire life they’ve lived together—

“Here’s in here somewhere,” Suga whispers, touching Hajime’s arm, and Hajime registers that he’s shaking, but he can barely feel anything. “We’re going to find him.” 

Hajime doesn’t have words to respond. Instead he hurries mechanically through the room, stepping around piles of paperwork, eyes trained on the shadowy door that must lead to the rest of the office complex. He has to find Tooru before the specialists find him. He has to find Tooru now. He has to—

“Iwaizumi,” whispers Suga from behind him, and Hajime almost doesn’t turn around. 

Almost. But then Suga whispers again, “ _ Hajime, _ ” and when Hajime glances over his shoulder, Suga is bent over the table, gazing at him with a look of urgency on his face. So Hajime turns away from the door, against his will, and takes a few steps back toward the table to see what Suga’s looking at. 

It’s all paperwork, and at first Hajime doesn’t understand what he’s supposed to be seeing. It looks like finances, a request for some kind of expensive grant, an application to some research team, but then Suga shifts the papers around and Hajime sees a thick, stapled packet, like a makeshift book. 

**Patient Zero,** is written in bold letters across the front, and underneath,  **a first-hand account of the century’s most astonishing medical mystery.**

Hajime’s mouth is dry. Carefully Suga flips the page open, and Hajime struggles to focus his eyes enough to read the small type on the first page. He only processes phrases— _ Our exclusive findings…. The first instance in the world…. As we are proudly the first to hypothesize…  _

It’s a book, Hajime realizes. And the applications—his eyes dart over them again. They’re all proposals. Research proposals. Applications to bigger, prestigious research teams in Toyko, even a lab in America. 

The specialists are trying to get out of this town and Tooru is their one-way ticket. 

A memory resurfaces so quickly that Hajime feels woozy, sick on his feet. Hanamaki saying something.  _ Maybe the specialists are trying to get famous off him _ . They were all at a classroom desk by a window, they were just joking around during lunchtime. It seems incredibly far away and yet it seems like it was just yesterday. Hajime’s brain sticks, trying to process this new information, information that somehow doesn’t seem new at all. Of course the specialists are taking advantage of Tooru. That has always been true; they’ve always known that, but Tooru keeps allowing it because he’s more afraid of himself than he’s afraid of the specialists. The specialists have convinced Tooru that he needs them. 

Hajime starts for the door again. 

“Iwaizumi,” Suga says again, but Hajime doesn’t turn around this time. Instead, he rasps, 

“Take the book—I mean, put it in the car. I’m going to find Tooru.” 

* * *

The lab isn’t the maze Hajime remembers. Hanamaki and Matsukawa must have been right when they said exposure to Tooru made it easier to sense him; Hajime is barely halfway down the first hallway when he feels the tendrils of Tooru’s biomagnetism wrapping around his wrists, tugging him around one corner, then the next. The faster he walks, the more intense the fear becomes—not Hajime’s fear, Tooru’s fear, a terrifying paralyzing fear. 

Hajime has no room for emotions besides anger. 

He breaks into a run when he gets to the back hallway where he found Tooru last time—he can feel Tooru’s biomagnetic field shaking like he’s sobbing, maybe shouting and when Hajime throws himself against the door at the end of the hallway, it rips through him—Tooru’s voice, pitched high in a scream, the sound that shatters the numb wall built around Hajime’s shell-shocked brain. 

The specialists whip around, staring wildly at Hajime, but Tooru continues to shake in the lab chair, clawing desperately at the VR headset on his face, his voice breaking down into a sob. Hajime’s body burns and for a moment he can’t move, he can’t see, he can only feel his fingernails digging into his palms and the stinging pain of his split knuckles, but then the rage clears enough for him to shout, “Tooru!”

Tooru doesn’t stop shaking, his mouth moving on broken sobs, and Hajime seethes with the realization that Tooru can’t hear him—he’s still trapped in his own world, the nightmare the specialists have created for him, where he’s hurting Hajime. It’s fucking insane—the specialists are fucking insane. Hajime slams his foot into one of the plastic office chairs and sends it toppling to the linoleum with a clatter, and the man jumps. The woman’s hands curl into the clipboard she’s holding. 

“Let him go,” Hajime demands, his voice still nearly a shout, stalking across the room, and the man grabs his phone from his lab coat pocket, holding out his hand like he’s going to stop Hajime from coming closer. 

“What are you doing!” the man shouts. “This is private property! I need you to vacate immediately or I’m calling the cops!” 

“Go ahead,” Hajime yells. “This is an illegal establishment, isn’t it? Do you even own this building?”

He can tell he’s struck a nerve by the single half-moment the man hesitates. Hajime’s body swells with something not quite triumph, not quite fury, and then he rears back his bloody fist and punches the man in the face. 

It’s the flashing images again—the man stumbling back with a hand to his crushed nose, Tooru’s screaming rising in pitch, the woman dropping the clipboard and lunging across the lab table—and then at Hajime’s back are more people, more shouting voices. It’s a blur but he can see flashes of orange jackets, Daichi and Suga hurrying at the specialists, and it gives Hajime a window to run to Tooru, get his hands on his lab chair. 

Tooru’s not restrained. It only makes Hajime more furious, that the thing binding Tooru to the chair is his own mind, the mind the specialists have manipulated into their own little lab animal. 

Hajime’s hands are shaking from the rage so badly that he can barely unstrap the headset from Tooru’s hair, but when he wrestles it off, Tooru grabs for it, his mouth still opening and closing on gulps of air, like he doesn’t understand what’s happening. It’s sick, the way his face is splotchy with tears and he still thinks he deserves to be punished, it’s absolutely sick and Hajime wants to put another fist through the specialists’ faces, punch them over and over until they’re spitting up blood. 

“Tooru,” he gasps, grabbing Tooru’s shoulders, and Tooru’s eyes squeeze shut. 

“No,” he whimpers, “No, no, no, Hajime, I didn’t mean to, please, please, I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,  _ Hajime _ —” 

Hajiime’s stomach curls. “Tooru,” he repeats, shaking him a little. “Tooru, I’m right here. I’m not hurt. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Tooru quiets down, but he’s still shaking, and Hajime pulls him close to his chest so that Tooru doesn’t have to open his eyes. He pulls Tooru off the lab chair, and Tooru stumbles on his feet, leaning heavily against Hajime’s body. He glimpses the woman running out of the room, phone to her ear, and maybe she’s actually calling the cops but Hajime doesn’t fucking care. He’ll go to jail for this if he has to—he doesn’t give a fuck. 

“We’re never coming back here,” Hajime says loudly, partly for the man backed into the wall, holding his bloody nose, and partly for himself, for his own pride, but mostly for Tooru. He’s never letting Tooru come back here. 

Hajime knows who the real monsters are, now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaah I'm so sorry abt this chapter, I think it's a bit shorter than some of the others but maybe that's just because of the pacing haha. we're getting so close to the end!!!


End file.
